It's the shared hatred of the rest of us that unites Islamists and the Left.
AMERICA'S BLACK DINOSAURS
The death of 13-year-old Devin Brown at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department has generated a wide array of complicated emotions in the black community, including shock and anguish, confusion and introspection. Why, people wondered, was this boy killed? .... But while the community searched for real answers to complex questions in the days after the shooting, the traditional black leadership of the city did no such thing. Instead, our leaders reacted in ways that were all too predictable.
The Urban League's John Mack immediately jumped in - before the investigation had even been opened, much less completed - saying, "Some police officers don't value the lives of young African American males." The ever-pugnacious Rep. Maxine Waters beseeched the community to "demand justice." The NAACP's Geraldine Washington said police were supposed to " protect and serve, and they've got it wrong."
Not only were these responses predictable, but they were inflammatory, offering new reasons to question the health of America's civil rights advocacy groups, not just in Los Angeles but across the country. The leaders of these groups say they represent the interests of black Americans, yet it seems increasingly clear that their lives rarely touch the lives of those they claim to speak for and, in many cases, that they never move outside their own cloistered, out-of-touch activist circles....
In a desperate search to maintain their own relevancy, these groups have insisted on making white racism their nearly singular focus. This has not served them well.... With rare exceptions, the quest by civil rights groups to recapture the vibrancy and relevancy of a bygone era often leads to the advocacy of issues that cause a great deal of head-scratching. This tendency was exposed by the recent shameful episode involving Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where Rep. Waters (backed by a host of community activists and other leadership figures) led a series of protests and demonstrations in an attempt to "save our hospital" - even though the hospital teeters on the brink of closure because of irregularities that resulted in the deaths of patients. It was stunning to watch leaders arguing that efforts to close a hospital that was killing its black and brown patients was somehow the result of a conspiratorial racial animus toward the black-run institution.
More here
****************************
ELSEWHERE
Voting fraud in Britain too: "The general election is wide open to fraud, thanks to the headlong rush into postal voting, the Government was told yesterday. Ministers have been urged for years to introduce safeguards against cheating but have refused to change the law, according to John Owen, Birmingham's elections officer and one of the country's leading experts on the subject. He was giving evidence to a special election court convened to hear allegations of widespread fraud and vote-rigging in the June local elections last year.... Voters described how they were persuaded to hand their completed ballots to Labour canvassers to be delivered to the election office. The votes appeared to have been opened and changed, using correction fluid, in favour of Labour before being counted in the poll. An election manager testified that the office received phone calls during the campaign asking whether votes altered with correction fluid would count even if they arrived in sealed envelopes that had been slit open. Callers were assured that they would be valid" (!!).
How ironic that far-Leftists are implementing Milton Friedman's ideas about traffic congestion. Under "Red Ken", the system works like a charm in London -- by keeping the poor out -- and San Francisco is leaning that way too: "San Francisco would become the first city in the nation to charge drivers just for driving in its chronically congested downtown under a sure-to-be controversial proposal being aired today. Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, chair of the San Francisco Transportation Authority, will ask the agency to study a downtown toll zone -- whereby drivers would need to purchase a daily pass to drive in The City's most congested streets -- as a potential solution to the Municipal Transportation Agency's woeful budget problems."
America's own terrorists: "A pipe bomb was found and safely dismantled at a Department of Motor Vehicles office Tuesday - the latest in what is being investigated as a string of possible ecoterrorist incidents in communities east of Sacramento. In the same community of Auburn, a different type of homemade explosive was found and dismantled Sunday outside the Placer County Courthouse. No one claimed responsibility for either incident, the FBI said"
Californian terrorist caught: "In what federal agents consider a huge break in their probe of five attempted firebombings that have plagued the region since December, a 21-year-old Newcastle man was indicted Thursday on charges that he took part in three of the incidents. Ryan Daniel Lewis, who has been in federal custody since Feb. 8, was indicted on charges tied to attempted arsons in Lincoln on Dec. 27 and Auburn on Jan. 12, as well as the Feb. 7 firebombing of a Sutter Creek apartment complex that was under construction".
Feds protecting illegals: "Arizona prison officials say taxpayers are paying more than $28,000 a day to incarcerate hundreds of undocumented immigrants because the federal government hasn't filed the paperwork necessary to deport them to Mexico. Arizona Department of Corrections Director Dora Schriro said deporting such criminals should be a 'no-brainer' given the money that could be saved and the beds that could be freed in the state's overcrowded prison system. Formal deportation orders for 46 of the 526 eligible inmates have been on file for several months, but state prison officials can't get Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pick them up, Schriro said. 'I don't know why it's not getting done anymore, but it's not getting done,' she said."
A lot of Left-leaning churches are moving to "divest" from Israel -- i.e. sell shares in companies that make profits from dealings in Israel. Ten O'Clock Scholar has some good comments on it but misses the main point: The shares will be bought by someone else so the action will have no effect on anything in the real world.
Myth illogical : "The AARP claims to represent us seniors, but more often it just lectures us relentlessly. One such sermon in the AARP Bulletin, opposing any addition of choice and ownership to Social Security, boasted 'groups like AARP that oppose [privatization] will spend millions of dollars to sway opinion.' Apparently, it plans to waste thousands of words, too, and without much concern about accuracy."
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels despised democracy and believed in violence. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at "the true religion"
There is a good article today on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS about the towering hypocrisy of the Leftist media in the Gannon affair.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Monday, February 28, 2005
Sunday, February 27, 2005
SOME ECONOMICS
The worriers about America's foreign debt are answered systematically here. A small excerpt: "The U.S. economy, according to doubters, rests on an unsustainable accumulation of foreign debt. Fueled by government profligacy and low private savings rates, the current account deficit -- the difference between what U.S. residents spend abroad and what they earn abroad in a year -- now stands at almost six percent of GDP; total net foreign liabilities are approaching a quarter of GDP. Sudden unwillingness by investors abroad to continue adding to their already large dollar assets, in this scenario, would set off a panic, causing the dollar to tank, interest rates to skyrocket, and the U.S. economy to descend into crisis, dragging the rest of the world down with it. Despite the persistence and pervasiveness of this doomsday prophecy, U.S. hegemony is in reality solidly grounded: it rests on an economy that is continually extending its lead in the innovation and application of new technology, ensuring its continued appeal for foreign central banks and private investors. The dollar's role as the global monetary standard is not threatened, and the risk to U.S. financial stability posed by large foreign liabilities has been exaggerated".
Outsourcing CREATES jobs: "The fact of the matter is, the most successful companies are outsourcers. And a Dartmouth study found that outsourcers are the bigger job creators. Since 1992, America has lost 361 million jobs, but during that same time, it also gained 380 million jobs - millions more than it lost. "Oh, I love my job now!" That's Shirley Bernard talking - the outsourcing "victim" the AFL-CIO wanted me to interview. At her old job at Levi's, the work was hot, noisy and physically difficult. Now, she's a secretary. She's paid more, too. She worries about the long term, and she's still an opponent of outsourcing, but she admits that many of her co-workers have moved on to better jobs. "Some of them have got, really got excellent jobs that they would never have even left Levi's for if the plant hadn't closed," she says. "This kind of forced them to ... to make a decision what they wanted to do and ... and they're really happy at what they do.""
From this article it looks like Latin America is continuing its policy of shooting itself in the foot -- attacking private enterprise and thus cutting off investment. They seem to be instinctively socialistic. Great way to stay poor! Excerpt: "Even less certain is how she and 130 million other Latin Americans will get clean water anytime soon in a region where providing basic services remains among the most pressing public health and political issues. Governments like Bolivia's tried the task themselves before, abandoned it as too costly, and turned to private companies in the 1990's. Today as privatization is rejected, foreign investment is plummeting across the region and the challenge is being returned to states perhaps less equipped than a decade ago. The trend is not unique to Bolivia, where a lack of clean water contributes to the death of every tenth child before the age of 5, and it has presented Latin American leaders with a nettlesome question: what now?"
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
The Federalist have just used the notorious "Berkeley study" of conservative psychology as a jumping-off point for a good rant about leftist psychology. Excerpt: "Liberals are almost uniformly defined by their hypocrisy and dissociation from reality. For example, the wealthiest U.S. senators -- among them Kerry, Kennedy, Corzine, Kohl, Rockefeller, Feinstein, and Rhode Island RINO Lincoln Chaffee -- fancy themselves as defenders of the poor, but they have no idea of what it's like to live without a bloated trust fund. Liberals speak of unity, but they appeal to the worst in human nature by dividing Americans into dependent constituencies. Just who are these liberal constituencies? They support freedom of thought, unless your thoughts don't comport with theirs. They feign tolerance while practicing intolerance. They resist open discussion and debate of their views, yet seek to silence dissenters. They insist that they care more about protecting habitat than those who hunt and fish. They protest for nature conservation while advocating homosexuality. They denounce capital punishment for the most heinous of criminals, while ardently supporting the killing of the most innocent among us -- children prior to birth."
The Federalist does however seem to have missed my systematic demolition of the "Berkeley" study. Academics define expertise on any given subject by the number of articles the person has had published about that subject in the academic journals. By that criterion I am actually the most expert person there is on the matters raised by the "Berkeley study".
There is a VERY disturbing article here about the American Federal justice system that makes me glad I am an Australian and not an American. Australia still has some of the protections against injustice that America has lost. American Federal trials do seem to be remarkably like Stalin's show trials -- particularly in their use of coerced testimony.
No connection, of course: "Rape attacks are increasing rapidly in England and Wales, but the number of cases that end in a successful prosecution has fallen to a record low. According to government figures published yesterday,only one in eighteen rapes reported to police ends with the suspect being punished, although government ministers have pledged to increase the number of convictions.... According to a study by the Home Office, groups of predatory men are now targeting drunken women to rape and sexually assault. Jo Lovett, one of the authors, said: "There are people who are undoubtedly targeting women who are drunk." The report, published by the Home Office yesterday, disclosed the latest rape figures and that some men are now trawling bars looking for drunk women to rape. It also estimated that the actual number of rapes in England and Wales is more than four times higher than the 11,700 reported to the police in 2002."
A pretty good bias study: "Applying a novel approach based on frequently used ratings of the liberal or conservative leaning of politicians, a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia discovered that most mainstream media outlets do exhibit a strong liberal bias. "We found that most of the mainstream media view events through a 'lens' that is very similar to that used by Democrats in Congress," said Jeff Milyo, MU associate professor of economics and public affairs. "That is, most major media outlets and Democrats cite similar sources of expertise, such as particular think tanks and advocacy groups. This suggests that popular complaints about a liberal bias in the media are well-founded. To determine the bias of media outlets, Milyo and colleague Tim Groseclose, a political scientist at UCLA, applied the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scoring system. ADA scores are used widely in political science to describe the placement of an individual member of Congress on an ideological scale"
I have just transferred here Chris Brand's latest batch of exceedingly incorrect posts about race and such matters.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx saw all capitalists as "Jews". My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at 1 Corinthians 15 and the spiritual nature of the resurrection again.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
The worriers about America's foreign debt are answered systematically here. A small excerpt: "The U.S. economy, according to doubters, rests on an unsustainable accumulation of foreign debt. Fueled by government profligacy and low private savings rates, the current account deficit -- the difference between what U.S. residents spend abroad and what they earn abroad in a year -- now stands at almost six percent of GDP; total net foreign liabilities are approaching a quarter of GDP. Sudden unwillingness by investors abroad to continue adding to their already large dollar assets, in this scenario, would set off a panic, causing the dollar to tank, interest rates to skyrocket, and the U.S. economy to descend into crisis, dragging the rest of the world down with it. Despite the persistence and pervasiveness of this doomsday prophecy, U.S. hegemony is in reality solidly grounded: it rests on an economy that is continually extending its lead in the innovation and application of new technology, ensuring its continued appeal for foreign central banks and private investors. The dollar's role as the global monetary standard is not threatened, and the risk to U.S. financial stability posed by large foreign liabilities has been exaggerated".
Outsourcing CREATES jobs: "The fact of the matter is, the most successful companies are outsourcers. And a Dartmouth study found that outsourcers are the bigger job creators. Since 1992, America has lost 361 million jobs, but during that same time, it also gained 380 million jobs - millions more than it lost. "Oh, I love my job now!" That's Shirley Bernard talking - the outsourcing "victim" the AFL-CIO wanted me to interview. At her old job at Levi's, the work was hot, noisy and physically difficult. Now, she's a secretary. She's paid more, too. She worries about the long term, and she's still an opponent of outsourcing, but she admits that many of her co-workers have moved on to better jobs. "Some of them have got, really got excellent jobs that they would never have even left Levi's for if the plant hadn't closed," she says. "This kind of forced them to ... to make a decision what they wanted to do and ... and they're really happy at what they do.""
From this article it looks like Latin America is continuing its policy of shooting itself in the foot -- attacking private enterprise and thus cutting off investment. They seem to be instinctively socialistic. Great way to stay poor! Excerpt: "Even less certain is how she and 130 million other Latin Americans will get clean water anytime soon in a region where providing basic services remains among the most pressing public health and political issues. Governments like Bolivia's tried the task themselves before, abandoned it as too costly, and turned to private companies in the 1990's. Today as privatization is rejected, foreign investment is plummeting across the region and the challenge is being returned to states perhaps less equipped than a decade ago. The trend is not unique to Bolivia, where a lack of clean water contributes to the death of every tenth child before the age of 5, and it has presented Latin American leaders with a nettlesome question: what now?"
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
The Federalist have just used the notorious "Berkeley study" of conservative psychology as a jumping-off point for a good rant about leftist psychology. Excerpt: "Liberals are almost uniformly defined by their hypocrisy and dissociation from reality. For example, the wealthiest U.S. senators -- among them Kerry, Kennedy, Corzine, Kohl, Rockefeller, Feinstein, and Rhode Island RINO Lincoln Chaffee -- fancy themselves as defenders of the poor, but they have no idea of what it's like to live without a bloated trust fund. Liberals speak of unity, but they appeal to the worst in human nature by dividing Americans into dependent constituencies. Just who are these liberal constituencies? They support freedom of thought, unless your thoughts don't comport with theirs. They feign tolerance while practicing intolerance. They resist open discussion and debate of their views, yet seek to silence dissenters. They insist that they care more about protecting habitat than those who hunt and fish. They protest for nature conservation while advocating homosexuality. They denounce capital punishment for the most heinous of criminals, while ardently supporting the killing of the most innocent among us -- children prior to birth."
The Federalist does however seem to have missed my systematic demolition of the "Berkeley" study. Academics define expertise on any given subject by the number of articles the person has had published about that subject in the academic journals. By that criterion I am actually the most expert person there is on the matters raised by the "Berkeley study".
There is a VERY disturbing article here about the American Federal justice system that makes me glad I am an Australian and not an American. Australia still has some of the protections against injustice that America has lost. American Federal trials do seem to be remarkably like Stalin's show trials -- particularly in their use of coerced testimony.
No connection, of course: "Rape attacks are increasing rapidly in England and Wales, but the number of cases that end in a successful prosecution has fallen to a record low. According to government figures published yesterday,only one in eighteen rapes reported to police ends with the suspect being punished, although government ministers have pledged to increase the number of convictions.... According to a study by the Home Office, groups of predatory men are now targeting drunken women to rape and sexually assault. Jo Lovett, one of the authors, said: "There are people who are undoubtedly targeting women who are drunk." The report, published by the Home Office yesterday, disclosed the latest rape figures and that some men are now trawling bars looking for drunk women to rape. It also estimated that the actual number of rapes in England and Wales is more than four times higher than the 11,700 reported to the police in 2002."
A pretty good bias study: "Applying a novel approach based on frequently used ratings of the liberal or conservative leaning of politicians, a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia discovered that most mainstream media outlets do exhibit a strong liberal bias. "We found that most of the mainstream media view events through a 'lens' that is very similar to that used by Democrats in Congress," said Jeff Milyo, MU associate professor of economics and public affairs. "That is, most major media outlets and Democrats cite similar sources of expertise, such as particular think tanks and advocacy groups. This suggests that popular complaints about a liberal bias in the media are well-founded. To determine the bias of media outlets, Milyo and colleague Tim Groseclose, a political scientist at UCLA, applied the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scoring system. ADA scores are used widely in political science to describe the placement of an individual member of Congress on an ideological scale"
I have just transferred here Chris Brand's latest batch of exceedingly incorrect posts about race and such matters.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx saw all capitalists as "Jews". My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at 1 Corinthians 15 and the spiritual nature of the resurrection again.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Saturday, February 26, 2005
ANTHROPOLOGY: FRAUD-PRONE
I spent my entire academic career teaching in university departments that offered anthropology courses so I think I have gained some impression of what it is all about. And the No. 1 impression I gained is that it is intensely ideological -- with many (but by no means all) anthropologists being on the far Left. It is anything but a dispassionate tabulation of kin networks and the like.
And the political nature of anthropology is very clearly shown by the saga of Margaret Mead -- still probably the best-known and most revered anthropologist. The fact that she was a dedicated liar seems to faze almost no-one in anthropology. What she said SHOULD have been right, apparently. Her work is seen as "fake but accurate", to use a recently famous phrase.
Her most famous book was Coming of Age in Samoa, in which she described the Polynesian Samoans as sexually libertine -- which was just about the opposite of the truth. But the book was written at a time when Western sexual morality was still fairly strict and the misrepresentations of the book helped the Left to ridicule that sort of morality. The man who exposed Mead's frauds, Derek Freeman, was not at all thanked for his work -- as he would have been if anthropology had been a true science. He was treated as a pariah, in fact.
And Franz Boas, Margaret Mead's teacher and the man often seen as the "father" of modern anthropology, was a fraud in the Leftist cause too. See here and here and here
So with that background the following recent news item should be no surprise:
I think anthropology is a very important discipline that has much to teach us about the nature of man but, regrettably, you have to beware of anthropologists in studying it. You have to try to get at the facts behind the ideology -- not easy. But occasionally the truth gets out -- as here and here and here
************************
ELSEWHERE
That "Cowboy capitalism" again: "The economy grew at a solid 3.8 percent annual rate in the final quarter of 2004 - stronger than previously estimated_ an encouraging sign that the business expansion was firmly entrenched at the start of the new year."
Dick McDonald is chortling over the $18 billion loss just posted by Viacom -- parent company of CBS and MTV. I suspect he is not alone.
Buy Hershey today: "This Valentine's Day, Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, encouraged the romantic sweethearts in his party not to buy chocolates from three of the nation's biggest chocolate producers: Hershey, Nestle and Mars. After all, he warned, all three are "red" companies - purportedly supporters of President Bush and his policies".
There is a new Australian site here that looks like it could be interesting to anybody who thinks that genetics has something to do with human behaviour and human differences.
Mark Steyn has a good summary of the playwright Arthur Miller -- showing what a determined Leftist and anti-American propagandist he was. Excerpt: "Miller was the most useful of the useful idiots. It was a marvelous inspiration to recast the communist "hysteria" of the 1950s as the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. Many people have pointed out the obvious flaw with "The Crucible" - that there were no witches, whereas there were certainly communists. For one thing, they were gobbling up a lot of real estate: they seized Poland in 1945, Bulgaria in '46, Hungary and Romania in '47, Czechoslovakia in '48, China in '49... As it is, Miller's play is an early example of the distinguishing characteristic of the modern Western left: its hermetically sealed parochialism. His genius was to give his fellow lefties what's become their most cherished article of faith - that any kind of urgent national defense is, by definition, paranoid and hysterical. It was untrue in the '50s and it's untrue today. "The Crucible" will survive because it's the modular furniture of left-wing agitprop: whatever the cause du jour, you can attach it to and it functions no better or worse than to anything else, mainly because it's perfectly pitched to the narcissism of the left".
EU Jews moving Rightwards: "The Belgian example is extreme, but it represents the sharpest edge of a much broader political shift by European Jews - away from the left, particularly the far left, and toward the center and right, in the face of rising displays of anti-Semitism and the European left's embrace of the Palestinian cause.... Of course, the shift is not monolithic and some of it is also associated with a rise in Jews' social and economic status. In the vast majority of cases it represents a move toward tolerant parties of the center or center-right rather than a leap to the far end of the spectrum - where many xenophobic parties remain unfriendly to Jews as well as to Arabs. So the number of Jews on the far right remains a very slim minority. But the fact that there are any at all is a measure of the degree to which many of Europe's 2.4 million Jews feel abandoned by the left and are still searching for a comfortable place in European politics".
Wicked Thoughts has just put up a post that debunks the "Snopes" fact-checking service.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx did not understand the economics of his day. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at whether Christ died on a cross or not.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
I spent my entire academic career teaching in university departments that offered anthropology courses so I think I have gained some impression of what it is all about. And the No. 1 impression I gained is that it is intensely ideological -- with many (but by no means all) anthropologists being on the far Left. It is anything but a dispassionate tabulation of kin networks and the like.
And the political nature of anthropology is very clearly shown by the saga of Margaret Mead -- still probably the best-known and most revered anthropologist. The fact that she was a dedicated liar seems to faze almost no-one in anthropology. What she said SHOULD have been right, apparently. Her work is seen as "fake but accurate", to use a recently famous phrase.
Her most famous book was Coming of Age in Samoa, in which she described the Polynesian Samoans as sexually libertine -- which was just about the opposite of the truth. But the book was written at a time when Western sexual morality was still fairly strict and the misrepresentations of the book helped the Left to ridicule that sort of morality. The man who exposed Mead's frauds, Derek Freeman, was not at all thanked for his work -- as he would have been if anthropology had been a true science. He was treated as a pariah, in fact.
And Franz Boas, Margaret Mead's teacher and the man often seen as the "father" of modern anthropology, was a fraud in the Leftist cause too. See here and here and here
So with that background the following recent news item should be no surprise:
"A flamboyant anthropology professor, whose work had been cited as evidence Neanderthal man once lived in Northern Europe, has resigned after a German university panel ruled he fabricated data and plagiarized the works of his colleagues. Reiner Protsch von Zieten, a Frankfurt university panel ruled, lied about the age of human skulls, dating them tens of thousands of years old, even though they were much younger, reports Deutsche Welle. "The commission finds that Prof. Protsch has forged and manipulated scientific facts over the past 30 years," the university said of the widely recognized expert in carbon data in a prepared statement...... The fallout from Protsch's false dating of northern European bone finds is only beginning. Chris Stringer, a Stone Age specialist and head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum, said: "What was considered a major piece of evidence showing that the Neanderthals once lived in northern Europe has fallen by the wayside. We are having to rewrite prehistory." ..... Frankfurt University's president, Rudolf Steinberg, apologized for the university's failure to curb Protsch's misconduct for decades. "A lot of people looked the other way," he said."
I think anthropology is a very important discipline that has much to teach us about the nature of man but, regrettably, you have to beware of anthropologists in studying it. You have to try to get at the facts behind the ideology -- not easy. But occasionally the truth gets out -- as here and here and here
************************
ELSEWHERE
That "Cowboy capitalism" again: "The economy grew at a solid 3.8 percent annual rate in the final quarter of 2004 - stronger than previously estimated_ an encouraging sign that the business expansion was firmly entrenched at the start of the new year."
Dick McDonald is chortling over the $18 billion loss just posted by Viacom -- parent company of CBS and MTV. I suspect he is not alone.
Buy Hershey today: "This Valentine's Day, Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, encouraged the romantic sweethearts in his party not to buy chocolates from three of the nation's biggest chocolate producers: Hershey, Nestle and Mars. After all, he warned, all three are "red" companies - purportedly supporters of President Bush and his policies".
There is a new Australian site here that looks like it could be interesting to anybody who thinks that genetics has something to do with human behaviour and human differences.
Mark Steyn has a good summary of the playwright Arthur Miller -- showing what a determined Leftist and anti-American propagandist he was. Excerpt: "Miller was the most useful of the useful idiots. It was a marvelous inspiration to recast the communist "hysteria" of the 1950s as the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. Many people have pointed out the obvious flaw with "The Crucible" - that there were no witches, whereas there were certainly communists. For one thing, they were gobbling up a lot of real estate: they seized Poland in 1945, Bulgaria in '46, Hungary and Romania in '47, Czechoslovakia in '48, China in '49... As it is, Miller's play is an early example of the distinguishing characteristic of the modern Western left: its hermetically sealed parochialism. His genius was to give his fellow lefties what's become their most cherished article of faith - that any kind of urgent national defense is, by definition, paranoid and hysterical. It was untrue in the '50s and it's untrue today. "The Crucible" will survive because it's the modular furniture of left-wing agitprop: whatever the cause du jour, you can attach it to and it functions no better or worse than to anything else, mainly because it's perfectly pitched to the narcissism of the left".
EU Jews moving Rightwards: "The Belgian example is extreme, but it represents the sharpest edge of a much broader political shift by European Jews - away from the left, particularly the far left, and toward the center and right, in the face of rising displays of anti-Semitism and the European left's embrace of the Palestinian cause.... Of course, the shift is not monolithic and some of it is also associated with a rise in Jews' social and economic status. In the vast majority of cases it represents a move toward tolerant parties of the center or center-right rather than a leap to the far end of the spectrum - where many xenophobic parties remain unfriendly to Jews as well as to Arabs. So the number of Jews on the far right remains a very slim minority. But the fact that there are any at all is a measure of the degree to which many of Europe's 2.4 million Jews feel abandoned by the left and are still searching for a comfortable place in European politics".
Wicked Thoughts has just put up a post that debunks the "Snopes" fact-checking service.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx did not understand the economics of his day. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at whether Christ died on a cross or not.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Friday, February 25, 2005
ONE AMERICAN LEFTIST FINALLY GETS IT (MORE OR LESS)
Martin Peretz, a moderate American Leftist, has some remarkably perceptive comments on the state of his "liberal" brethren. Just a few excerpts:
"It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying..... Ask yourself: Who is a truly influential liberal mind in our culture? Whose ideas challenge and whose ideals inspire? Whose books and articles are read and passed around? There's no one, really....
even in the morally self-satisfied Scandinavian and Low Countries, the assuring left-wing bromides are no longer believed.....
Sharpton is an inciter of racial conflict. To him can be debited the fraudulent and dehumanizing scandal around Tawana Brawley (conflating scatology and sex), the Crown Heights violence between Jews and blacks, a fire in Harlem, the protests around a Korean grocery store in Brooklyn, and on and on. Yet the liberal press treats Sharpton as a genuine leader, even a moral one, the trickster as party statesman......
virtually nothing has been done to make sure that children of color--and other children, too, since the crisis in our educational system cuts across race and class--are receiving a different and better type of schooling, in science and in literacy, than those now coming into our colleges. This is not about Head Start. This is about a wholesale revamping of teaching and learning. The conservatives have their ideas, and many of them are good, such as charter schools and even vouchers. But give me a single liberal idea with some currency, even a structural notion, for transforming the elucidation of knowledge and thinking to the young. You can't.....
This will not curb the liberal complaint. That complaint is not a matter of circumstance. It is a permanent affliction of the liberal mind. It is not a symptom; it is a condition. And it is a condition related to the desperate hopes liberals have vested in the United Nations. That is their lodestone. But the lodestone does not perform. It is not a magnet for the good. It performs the magic of the wicked. It is corrupt, it is pompous, it is shackled to tyrants and cynics. It does not recognize a genocide when the genocide is seen and understood by all. Liberalism now needs to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let's hope we still have the strength....."
Belmont Club has a fuller commentary on the Peretz article and makes this excellent point:
"Paradoxically, dogmatism is rooted in relativism more than in the belief that real truth is discoverable. For as long as the truth is believed to be "out there"; it will be sought. When its existence is doubted none will venture into the dark. Under those conditions, we get exactly what Peretz describes: an illogical attachment to old formulations of the 1960s, which can be uttered only because they are hallowed."
In other words, the Leftist intellectual sickness is so great that it is the very believers in there being no such thing as right and wrong who are most fanatical in enforcing particular ideas of right and wrong -- under the banner of "political correctness". Fierce censorship is practiced in the name of "tolerance". It is the relativists who are most dogmatic. It is the supposed opponents of the "status quo" who are themselves stuck in a rut. Orwell would understand.
************************************
ELSEWHERE
A victory for free speech: Under the threat of legal action, the University of Nevada has blinked in its year-long confrontation with Prof. Hoppe. It was a close-run thing, though. Prof. Hoppe is not letting them off the hook, though, and is seeking compensation for their campaign against him: "UNLV President Carol Harter tried to end the standoff between professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe and administrators Friday by removing a critical letter from his personnel file. "Professor Hoppe does not assert that materials he presents are the opinions of UNLV, nor has he ever purported to speak for UNLV. Whether anyone in the university agrees or disagrees with Professor Hoppe's theories or his opinions is not ultimately relevant," Harter wrote in a statement sent to students and media. "Teaching is of its nature and origin provocative." But Hoppe and his attorneys weren't satisfied with the proposed resolution. They said they also want an apology and a year-long sabbatical for the professor".
The racist "Far Right" give me a lot of laughs. They have been doing so for a long time, in fact. One thing that they absolutely HATE is the term "Judeo-Christian". Why? because they see Jews as the racial enemy and Christianity as "us". So you can't have the two together, you see. I therefore posted on one of the sites they frequent this extract from an excellent conservative article by Dennis Prager -- who is a Jew. I did it in the full knowledge that seeing anything by a Jew there -- no matter how sensible -- would evoke an outpouring of rage. I was not disappointed -- as you will see if you read the comments. Being a totally incorrigible tease, therefore, I also added in the following as a comment on the comments: "The objections above to the notion "Judeo-Christian" amuse me. Has anyone noticed who the guys were who wrote BOTH parts of our holy book? And I guess that Christ guy was an Anglo-Saxon? Christianity IS Jewish! It's the evangelical sect of Judaism". I can imagine the spluttering at that comment!
Good news for Boeing: "Top European discount airline Ryanair ordered new planes worth more than $4 billion from Boeing Co. on Thursday as part of an ambitious plan to double its passenger numbers by 2012. Dublin-based Ryanair, which aims to become Europe's largest airline in seven years, said it had ordered 70 Boeing 737-800 aircraft and had taken options to buy a further 70".
Tristram Hunt is a pathetic British academic who hates America's large homes. He fears that Britain might go down the same path. Large homes are only for the rich apparently. Excerpt: "What hits one first about exurbia is its ugliness. Laid out by competing developers, disparate 'cookie-cutter' housing developments (often christened with faux Wild West prefixes such as Vale, Ranch or Stable) wander into the distance, devoid of any master-plan. Self-contained behind electronic gates, each house seamlessly resembles the others in a conveyor belt of McMansions".
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with much good reading.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx despised poor people. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Revelations 20 and the lake of fire.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Martin Peretz, a moderate American Leftist, has some remarkably perceptive comments on the state of his "liberal" brethren. Just a few excerpts:
"It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying..... Ask yourself: Who is a truly influential liberal mind in our culture? Whose ideas challenge and whose ideals inspire? Whose books and articles are read and passed around? There's no one, really....
even in the morally self-satisfied Scandinavian and Low Countries, the assuring left-wing bromides are no longer believed.....
Sharpton is an inciter of racial conflict. To him can be debited the fraudulent and dehumanizing scandal around Tawana Brawley (conflating scatology and sex), the Crown Heights violence between Jews and blacks, a fire in Harlem, the protests around a Korean grocery store in Brooklyn, and on and on. Yet the liberal press treats Sharpton as a genuine leader, even a moral one, the trickster as party statesman......
virtually nothing has been done to make sure that children of color--and other children, too, since the crisis in our educational system cuts across race and class--are receiving a different and better type of schooling, in science and in literacy, than those now coming into our colleges. This is not about Head Start. This is about a wholesale revamping of teaching and learning. The conservatives have their ideas, and many of them are good, such as charter schools and even vouchers. But give me a single liberal idea with some currency, even a structural notion, for transforming the elucidation of knowledge and thinking to the young. You can't.....
This will not curb the liberal complaint. That complaint is not a matter of circumstance. It is a permanent affliction of the liberal mind. It is not a symptom; it is a condition. And it is a condition related to the desperate hopes liberals have vested in the United Nations. That is their lodestone. But the lodestone does not perform. It is not a magnet for the good. It performs the magic of the wicked. It is corrupt, it is pompous, it is shackled to tyrants and cynics. It does not recognize a genocide when the genocide is seen and understood by all. Liberalism now needs to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let's hope we still have the strength....."
Belmont Club has a fuller commentary on the Peretz article and makes this excellent point:
"Paradoxically, dogmatism is rooted in relativism more than in the belief that real truth is discoverable. For as long as the truth is believed to be "out there"; it will be sought. When its existence is doubted none will venture into the dark. Under those conditions, we get exactly what Peretz describes: an illogical attachment to old formulations of the 1960s, which can be uttered only because they are hallowed."
In other words, the Leftist intellectual sickness is so great that it is the very believers in there being no such thing as right and wrong who are most fanatical in enforcing particular ideas of right and wrong -- under the banner of "political correctness". Fierce censorship is practiced in the name of "tolerance". It is the relativists who are most dogmatic. It is the supposed opponents of the "status quo" who are themselves stuck in a rut. Orwell would understand.
************************************
ELSEWHERE
A victory for free speech: Under the threat of legal action, the University of Nevada has blinked in its year-long confrontation with Prof. Hoppe. It was a close-run thing, though. Prof. Hoppe is not letting them off the hook, though, and is seeking compensation for their campaign against him: "UNLV President Carol Harter tried to end the standoff between professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe and administrators Friday by removing a critical letter from his personnel file. "Professor Hoppe does not assert that materials he presents are the opinions of UNLV, nor has he ever purported to speak for UNLV. Whether anyone in the university agrees or disagrees with Professor Hoppe's theories or his opinions is not ultimately relevant," Harter wrote in a statement sent to students and media. "Teaching is of its nature and origin provocative." But Hoppe and his attorneys weren't satisfied with the proposed resolution. They said they also want an apology and a year-long sabbatical for the professor".
The racist "Far Right" give me a lot of laughs. They have been doing so for a long time, in fact. One thing that they absolutely HATE is the term "Judeo-Christian". Why? because they see Jews as the racial enemy and Christianity as "us". So you can't have the two together, you see. I therefore posted on one of the sites they frequent this extract from an excellent conservative article by Dennis Prager -- who is a Jew. I did it in the full knowledge that seeing anything by a Jew there -- no matter how sensible -- would evoke an outpouring of rage. I was not disappointed -- as you will see if you read the comments. Being a totally incorrigible tease, therefore, I also added in the following as a comment on the comments: "The objections above to the notion "Judeo-Christian" amuse me. Has anyone noticed who the guys were who wrote BOTH parts of our holy book? And I guess that Christ guy was an Anglo-Saxon? Christianity IS Jewish! It's the evangelical sect of Judaism". I can imagine the spluttering at that comment!
Good news for Boeing: "Top European discount airline Ryanair ordered new planes worth more than $4 billion from Boeing Co. on Thursday as part of an ambitious plan to double its passenger numbers by 2012. Dublin-based Ryanair, which aims to become Europe's largest airline in seven years, said it had ordered 70 Boeing 737-800 aircraft and had taken options to buy a further 70".
Tristram Hunt is a pathetic British academic who hates America's large homes. He fears that Britain might go down the same path. Large homes are only for the rich apparently. Excerpt: "What hits one first about exurbia is its ugliness. Laid out by competing developers, disparate 'cookie-cutter' housing developments (often christened with faux Wild West prefixes such as Vale, Ranch or Stable) wander into the distance, devoid of any master-plan. Self-contained behind electronic gates, each house seamlessly resembles the others in a conveyor belt of McMansions".
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with much good reading.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx despised poor people. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Revelations 20 and the lake of fire.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Thursday, February 24, 2005
FROM BROOKES NEWS
The New York Times economic midget - and he is a conservative America's true national debt owed outside of government is just over $4.5 trillion, not $7.6 trillion.
Profits, wages and jobs Unfortunately the kind of nonsense Megalogenis wrote about wages, jobs and women is about par for the media
Economic costs of the greens' energy tax The real costs of the greens' energy tax is frightening
Stop Iran's mullahs Iran's mullahs have a long history of plotting suicide attacks, funding terrorism, waging war and silencing opponents
Fidel Castro: An outpost of tyranny next door Kim Jong-il and Iran's mullahs sign up with Fidel Castro
In America poverty is absolutely relative Has America wiped out poverty?
Uniting against radicalism The fact that the 9/11 attacks are widely believed to have been carried out in the name of Islam resulted in a great deal of prejudice against Muslims and misunderstanding of Islam
Details here
*********************************************
ELSEWHERE
Social Security reality: "Considerable public discussion and debate now rages over Social Security and how to reform it. As the system currently stands, as early as 2018, it will be necessary to finance a growing portion of its outlays to retirees by means of outside sources of funds, since at that point the sums paid into the system in the form of payroll taxes will begin to fall short of the sums it is obligated to pay out. What will bring this about is a substantial increase in the number of retirees, who draw from the system, relative to the number of workers, who pay into it. Some observers believe that the difficulties faced by the system will not begin until later, in 2042 or 2052. Between 2018 and that time, they believe, the system can draw down its vast accumulations of United States Government securities, which it has acquired over the many years in which it took in more in payroll taxes than it has had to pay out. I believe that 2018 is in fact the time when the difficulties will begin. The reason is that the government securities held by the Social Security system are not any kind of actual asset. They are a claim against the US Government to pay money that it does not possess and which it cannot obtain in any way other than by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or inflating the money supply.
Details of how GWB's social security proposals would affect individuals here. The Democrat "calculator" is of course the deceptive propaganda one would expect.
Another cost that needs more privatization: "Within a decade, the public sector will be paying nearly half the cost of U.S. health care, which is also swallowing an ever-larger chunk of the nation's resources, government economists reported on Wednesday".
Everybody pays for this: "During the Great Depression, the federal government started subsidizing family farmers who faced ruin because of unpredictable weather and dips in crop prices. Seven decades after the dust bowl years, the subsidy program has morphed into a gigantic giveaway for mega-farms, wealthy investors who may never set foot on their land and even dead farmers, whose estates exist only to collect the subsidies".
Scrappleface has an excellent satirical comment on the Larry Summers/Ward Churchill controversies.
Why do criminals break the law?: "Criminals are as much a victim as those they have victimized, right? After all, they do what they do because of poverty, or bad parenting, or lousy peers, mental illness or the availability of a gun, right? Well, no, says clinical psychologist Stanton Samenow, author of the book Inside the Criminal Mind. He says criminals are the way they are because that is what they choose to do."
GWB's basic doctrine: "A close reading of the President's second Inaugural Address reveals it is an effort to break down the dividing wall that has sometimes separated American interests and American idealism. The President's speech argues that pursuing our core principles will promote our national security - and that what happens within the borders of other nations is often of intense interest to our own..... The core of this doctrine rests on the President's belief that stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty - and as long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and resentment, a cauldron of anti-Western hatred and violence..... Our Administration is not without its critics - but it is worth noting, I think, that our critics have offered no competing theory on how to address the generator of global terrorism. They may take issue with our execution of policy - but they have no conceptual theory to offer in its place. And that is itself revealing."
Leftism is feelings-based: "With the ascendancy of leftist values that has followed the decline of Judeo-Christian religion, personal feelings have supplanted universal standards. In fact, feelings are the major unifying characteristic among contemporary liberal positions. Aside from reliance on feelings, how else can one explain a person who believes, let alone proudly announces on a bumper sticker, that "War is not the answer"? I know of no comparable conservative bumper sticker that is so demonstrably false and morally ignorant. Almost every great evil has been solved by war -- from slavery in America to the Holocaust in Europe. Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers making war, not by pacifists who would have allowed the Nazis to murder every Jew in Europe.... The "self-esteem movement" -- now conceded to have been a great producer of mediocrity and narcissism -- was entirely a liberal invention based on feelings for kids. The liberal preoccupation with whether America is loved or hated is also entirely feelings-based. The Left wants to be loved; the conservative wants to do what is right and deems world opinion fickle at best and immoral at worst."
There was recently a much publicized study saying that medical costs are a major cause of bankruptcies in the USA. Mike Tremoglie exposes the authors of the "report" concerned for the Leftist liars they are. They even deny the existence of the huge waiting lists that are such a feature of the Canadian system! With typical Leftist arrogance they seem to think reality is whatever they say it is.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx wanted moderate Leftists eliminated. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at different usages of the word "spirit".
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
The New York Times economic midget - and he is a conservative America's true national debt owed outside of government is just over $4.5 trillion, not $7.6 trillion.
Profits, wages and jobs Unfortunately the kind of nonsense Megalogenis wrote about wages, jobs and women is about par for the media
Economic costs of the greens' energy tax The real costs of the greens' energy tax is frightening
Stop Iran's mullahs Iran's mullahs have a long history of plotting suicide attacks, funding terrorism, waging war and silencing opponents
Fidel Castro: An outpost of tyranny next door Kim Jong-il and Iran's mullahs sign up with Fidel Castro
In America poverty is absolutely relative Has America wiped out poverty?
Uniting against radicalism The fact that the 9/11 attacks are widely believed to have been carried out in the name of Islam resulted in a great deal of prejudice against Muslims and misunderstanding of Islam
Details here
*********************************************
ELSEWHERE
Social Security reality: "Considerable public discussion and debate now rages over Social Security and how to reform it. As the system currently stands, as early as 2018, it will be necessary to finance a growing portion of its outlays to retirees by means of outside sources of funds, since at that point the sums paid into the system in the form of payroll taxes will begin to fall short of the sums it is obligated to pay out. What will bring this about is a substantial increase in the number of retirees, who draw from the system, relative to the number of workers, who pay into it. Some observers believe that the difficulties faced by the system will not begin until later, in 2042 or 2052. Between 2018 and that time, they believe, the system can draw down its vast accumulations of United States Government securities, which it has acquired over the many years in which it took in more in payroll taxes than it has had to pay out. I believe that 2018 is in fact the time when the difficulties will begin. The reason is that the government securities held by the Social Security system are not any kind of actual asset. They are a claim against the US Government to pay money that it does not possess and which it cannot obtain in any way other than by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or inflating the money supply.
Details of how GWB's social security proposals would affect individuals here. The Democrat "calculator" is of course the deceptive propaganda one would expect.
Another cost that needs more privatization: "Within a decade, the public sector will be paying nearly half the cost of U.S. health care, which is also swallowing an ever-larger chunk of the nation's resources, government economists reported on Wednesday".
Everybody pays for this: "During the Great Depression, the federal government started subsidizing family farmers who faced ruin because of unpredictable weather and dips in crop prices. Seven decades after the dust bowl years, the subsidy program has morphed into a gigantic giveaway for mega-farms, wealthy investors who may never set foot on their land and even dead farmers, whose estates exist only to collect the subsidies".
Scrappleface has an excellent satirical comment on the Larry Summers/Ward Churchill controversies.
Why do criminals break the law?: "Criminals are as much a victim as those they have victimized, right? After all, they do what they do because of poverty, or bad parenting, or lousy peers, mental illness or the availability of a gun, right? Well, no, says clinical psychologist Stanton Samenow, author of the book Inside the Criminal Mind. He says criminals are the way they are because that is what they choose to do."
GWB's basic doctrine: "A close reading of the President's second Inaugural Address reveals it is an effort to break down the dividing wall that has sometimes separated American interests and American idealism. The President's speech argues that pursuing our core principles will promote our national security - and that what happens within the borders of other nations is often of intense interest to our own..... The core of this doctrine rests on the President's belief that stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty - and as long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and resentment, a cauldron of anti-Western hatred and violence..... Our Administration is not without its critics - but it is worth noting, I think, that our critics have offered no competing theory on how to address the generator of global terrorism. They may take issue with our execution of policy - but they have no conceptual theory to offer in its place. And that is itself revealing."
Leftism is feelings-based: "With the ascendancy of leftist values that has followed the decline of Judeo-Christian religion, personal feelings have supplanted universal standards. In fact, feelings are the major unifying characteristic among contemporary liberal positions. Aside from reliance on feelings, how else can one explain a person who believes, let alone proudly announces on a bumper sticker, that "War is not the answer"? I know of no comparable conservative bumper sticker that is so demonstrably false and morally ignorant. Almost every great evil has been solved by war -- from slavery in America to the Holocaust in Europe. Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers making war, not by pacifists who would have allowed the Nazis to murder every Jew in Europe.... The "self-esteem movement" -- now conceded to have been a great producer of mediocrity and narcissism -- was entirely a liberal invention based on feelings for kids. The liberal preoccupation with whether America is loved or hated is also entirely feelings-based. The Left wants to be loved; the conservative wants to do what is right and deems world opinion fickle at best and immoral at worst."
There was recently a much publicized study saying that medical costs are a major cause of bankruptcies in the USA. Mike Tremoglie exposes the authors of the "report" concerned for the Leftist liars they are. They even deny the existence of the huge waiting lists that are such a feature of the Canadian system! With typical Leftist arrogance they seem to think reality is whatever they say it is.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx wanted moderate Leftists eliminated. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at different usages of the word "spirit".
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
THE "GANNON" BEAT-UP
Another good comment on the disgusting Left from Powerline: "The American left has been guilty of many contemptible actions over the past twenty years, but few are so deeply offensive as its treatment of Jim Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon (His real name is Guckert, but he adopted Gannon as a pen name). Gannon is, apparently, a homosexual with a rather sordid past, including stints working as a gay escort. He is now trying to make a career for himself as a reporter; until a week or two ago, he worked for the online Talon News Service. He was able to get one-day-at-a-time passes to attend White House press briefings, where he committed the unpardonable sin of asking questions that had a pro-Bush administration twist. (Sort of like Helen Thomas, only in reverse, and nowhere near as one-sided.)
The presence of a Bush-friendly journalist in the White House press corps was taken by the left as a deep affront. A study conducted a few years ago found that the White House press corps is 90% Democratic; apparently the left won't be satisfied until the figure is 100%. So liberals began "investigating" Gannon. They found that he was a homosexual and started posting photos of him on their web sites, along with vicious personal attacks. Gannon, stunned by the virulence of the left's attack on him, quit his job at Talon. Subsequently, a low-life named John Aravosis who is a gay activist and has a web site, found nude photos of Gannon and posted them online.....
There is, I guess, a story here. But it has nothing to do with Jeff Gannon, a poor guy who thought he could put his past behind him and pursue a career as a reporter. No, the story has to do with the depth to which the Democratic Party and the American left have fallen. Desperate to change the subject in the wake of the Eason Jordan debacle, they seized on poor Mr. Gannon, made silly, baseless accusations against him, denounced him for being a homosexual, and, in the ultimate indignity, tracked down and published nude photographs of him. All to distract attention from Jordan, and to punish Mr. Gannon for the "sin" of being a Republican. Rarely have I seen such deeply contemptible conduct".
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
John Howard's smart move: "Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has welcomed Australia's decision to dispatch 450 more soldiers to Iraq to protect Japanese troops and keep order in Muthana Province. ''We welcome and laud the decision,'' Mr Koizumi said at his office. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda and Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura made similar remarks earlier in the day. ''The Japanese Government greatly appreciates, welcomes, and rates highly [the Australian deployment]," Mr Hosoda said. The Australian troops will be based mainly in the provincial capital of Samawah, where nearly 600 Japanese troops are stationed for humanitarian and reconstruction work".
There is an amazing NYT article here. More Africans have now come to America voluntarily than came as slaves. And, as we all know, immigrant blacks (Colin Powell, anyone?) do much better than American-born blacks. Present-day American blacks have been spoiled by welfare and the Democrat-sponsored culture of grievance. Immigrant blacks haven't.
Harvard professors still trying to destroy their own reputation as scholars: "In a rare second faculty meeting in a week, set for Tuesday afternoon, critics of Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers are expected to excoriate him again for his leadership style and recent remarks about women in science and engineering". Interesting that it seems to be the students who strongly support Summers. They KNOW the ideological rigidity in what is taught and don't like it
Democrat racism: "The most powerful African-American member of the House of Representatives is calling on Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean to apologize for a racially insensitive joke he told Friday during an address to the Congressional Black Caucus. Asked on Tuesday if Dean should apologize for suggesting during his address that minorities usually work as servants, Rep. Charles Rangel told ABC Radio's Sean Hannity, "If he offended anybody, he certainly should." Critics say Dean crossed the line when he told the CBC, "You think the Republicans could get this many people of color in a single room? Only if they had the hotel staff in here." .... Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is Maryland's first black to hold that office, joined with former Rep. J.C. Watts yesterday to demand that Dean apologize, and expanded on his complaint last night. "I think it is rather presumptive [for Dean] to presume that the staff in the hotel is African-American," Steele told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." Steele said the DNC chairman's remark was further evidence that the Democratic Party takes the black vote for granted. "If I or another Republican had made a statement like that, it would be all over the place," Steele added. "And so the reality is for me, when I read that and hear it, it's offensive, because what it says is you don't see me in any other role.""
Dick McDonald comments: "Doug Wead, part of Bush I's administration, has released tapes he secretly made of George W. Bush before he became President. Forgetting that he is selling a book, betraying a friend, and "not doing it for money", Wead has released a tape that the leftwing MSM has jumped all over that proves George W. Bush tried marijuana. This leaves the MSM in a quandary. By criticizing Bush, they criticise Gore, Clinton and the deliriously high editorial room at the NYT. By publishing the story, the author's book will reach a greater audience and that means the author's evaluation of Bush as a very important historical figure will be advanced. Dems won't like that".
Anti-democratic Democrats nabbed: "On 24 January 2005 five Kerry-Edwards campaign staffers were arrested for slashing the tires of 25 rental vans hired by the Republican Party to shuttle voters to the polls. If convicted, the suspects face a possible three-and-a-half years and $10,000 fine on each count of criminal damage to property. Those charged include Michael Pratt, 32, Sowande A. Omokunde, 25, Lewis G. Caldwell, 28, and Lavelle Mohammad, 35, all of Milwaukee; and Justin Howell, 20, of Racine. Among the Black defendants are the sons of prominent local politicians. Michael Pratt is the son of Marvin Pratt, who became acting mayor of Milwaukee when Mayor John Norquist stepped down in January 2004. Pratt lost the spring mayoral election under allegations of financial shenanigans, denying him the opportunity to be Milwaukee's first elected Black mayor. Pratt's wife famously blamed the loss on "White racism," calling Milwaukee "redneck America citifed." Sowande Omokunde is the son of Gwen Moore, a former state senator who last November became the first Black elected to the U.S. Congress from Wisconsin. The tire-slashing spree took place in the heart of her district - U.S. House District 4. At the foundation of Moore's campaign was a promise to prevent "voting rights violations." Yet she had 'no comment' when asked to explain her son's apparent desire to prevent elderly and handicapped Republicans from reaching the polls - a civil rights violation".
My latest posting on MarxWords shows what a feminist Marx wasn't. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Romans 1 & 2 and the Day of Judgment.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Another good comment on the disgusting Left from Powerline: "The American left has been guilty of many contemptible actions over the past twenty years, but few are so deeply offensive as its treatment of Jim Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon (His real name is Guckert, but he adopted Gannon as a pen name). Gannon is, apparently, a homosexual with a rather sordid past, including stints working as a gay escort. He is now trying to make a career for himself as a reporter; until a week or two ago, he worked for the online Talon News Service. He was able to get one-day-at-a-time passes to attend White House press briefings, where he committed the unpardonable sin of asking questions that had a pro-Bush administration twist. (Sort of like Helen Thomas, only in reverse, and nowhere near as one-sided.)
The presence of a Bush-friendly journalist in the White House press corps was taken by the left as a deep affront. A study conducted a few years ago found that the White House press corps is 90% Democratic; apparently the left won't be satisfied until the figure is 100%. So liberals began "investigating" Gannon. They found that he was a homosexual and started posting photos of him on their web sites, along with vicious personal attacks. Gannon, stunned by the virulence of the left's attack on him, quit his job at Talon. Subsequently, a low-life named John Aravosis who is a gay activist and has a web site, found nude photos of Gannon and posted them online.....
There is, I guess, a story here. But it has nothing to do with Jeff Gannon, a poor guy who thought he could put his past behind him and pursue a career as a reporter. No, the story has to do with the depth to which the Democratic Party and the American left have fallen. Desperate to change the subject in the wake of the Eason Jordan debacle, they seized on poor Mr. Gannon, made silly, baseless accusations against him, denounced him for being a homosexual, and, in the ultimate indignity, tracked down and published nude photographs of him. All to distract attention from Jordan, and to punish Mr. Gannon for the "sin" of being a Republican. Rarely have I seen such deeply contemptible conduct".
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
John Howard's smart move: "Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has welcomed Australia's decision to dispatch 450 more soldiers to Iraq to protect Japanese troops and keep order in Muthana Province. ''We welcome and laud the decision,'' Mr Koizumi said at his office. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda and Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura made similar remarks earlier in the day. ''The Japanese Government greatly appreciates, welcomes, and rates highly [the Australian deployment]," Mr Hosoda said. The Australian troops will be based mainly in the provincial capital of Samawah, where nearly 600 Japanese troops are stationed for humanitarian and reconstruction work".
There is an amazing NYT article here. More Africans have now come to America voluntarily than came as slaves. And, as we all know, immigrant blacks (Colin Powell, anyone?) do much better than American-born blacks. Present-day American blacks have been spoiled by welfare and the Democrat-sponsored culture of grievance. Immigrant blacks haven't.
Harvard professors still trying to destroy their own reputation as scholars: "In a rare second faculty meeting in a week, set for Tuesday afternoon, critics of Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers are expected to excoriate him again for his leadership style and recent remarks about women in science and engineering". Interesting that it seems to be the students who strongly support Summers. They KNOW the ideological rigidity in what is taught and don't like it
Democrat racism: "The most powerful African-American member of the House of Representatives is calling on Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean to apologize for a racially insensitive joke he told Friday during an address to the Congressional Black Caucus. Asked on Tuesday if Dean should apologize for suggesting during his address that minorities usually work as servants, Rep. Charles Rangel told ABC Radio's Sean Hannity, "If he offended anybody, he certainly should." Critics say Dean crossed the line when he told the CBC, "You think the Republicans could get this many people of color in a single room? Only if they had the hotel staff in here." .... Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is Maryland's first black to hold that office, joined with former Rep. J.C. Watts yesterday to demand that Dean apologize, and expanded on his complaint last night. "I think it is rather presumptive [for Dean] to presume that the staff in the hotel is African-American," Steele told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." Steele said the DNC chairman's remark was further evidence that the Democratic Party takes the black vote for granted. "If I or another Republican had made a statement like that, it would be all over the place," Steele added. "And so the reality is for me, when I read that and hear it, it's offensive, because what it says is you don't see me in any other role.""
Dick McDonald comments: "Doug Wead, part of Bush I's administration, has released tapes he secretly made of George W. Bush before he became President. Forgetting that he is selling a book, betraying a friend, and "not doing it for money", Wead has released a tape that the leftwing MSM has jumped all over that proves George W. Bush tried marijuana. This leaves the MSM in a quandary. By criticizing Bush, they criticise Gore, Clinton and the deliriously high editorial room at the NYT. By publishing the story, the author's book will reach a greater audience and that means the author's evaluation of Bush as a very important historical figure will be advanced. Dems won't like that".
Anti-democratic Democrats nabbed: "On 24 January 2005 five Kerry-Edwards campaign staffers were arrested for slashing the tires of 25 rental vans hired by the Republican Party to shuttle voters to the polls. If convicted, the suspects face a possible three-and-a-half years and $10,000 fine on each count of criminal damage to property. Those charged include Michael Pratt, 32, Sowande A. Omokunde, 25, Lewis G. Caldwell, 28, and Lavelle Mohammad, 35, all of Milwaukee; and Justin Howell, 20, of Racine. Among the Black defendants are the sons of prominent local politicians. Michael Pratt is the son of Marvin Pratt, who became acting mayor of Milwaukee when Mayor John Norquist stepped down in January 2004. Pratt lost the spring mayoral election under allegations of financial shenanigans, denying him the opportunity to be Milwaukee's first elected Black mayor. Pratt's wife famously blamed the loss on "White racism," calling Milwaukee "redneck America citifed." Sowande Omokunde is the son of Gwen Moore, a former state senator who last November became the first Black elected to the U.S. Congress from Wisconsin. The tire-slashing spree took place in the heart of her district - U.S. House District 4. At the foundation of Moore's campaign was a promise to prevent "voting rights violations." Yet she had 'no comment' when asked to explain her son's apparent desire to prevent elderly and handicapped Republicans from reaching the polls - a civil rights violation".
My latest posting on MarxWords shows what a feminist Marx wasn't. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Romans 1 & 2 and the Day of Judgment.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
TUESDAY ROUNDUP
Once again I pick out what I think are my best posts for the week:
On Dissecting Leftism I question the "gay gene" theory
On Greenie Watch I report on a Greenie faith-healing meeting.
On Political Correctness Watch I report on the incorrect sandwich issue at Rutgers
On Education Watch I note a movie about Communism with lessons for American academe
On Socialized Medicine I note how to kill a healthy baby and get away with it
On Gun Watch I note that Australia has a rising crime rate despite sweeping gun control
On A scripture blog I note that the immortal soul is a pagan idea rather than a scriptural idea
On Leftists as Elitists I note that socialism is inherently elitist
On MarxWords I note that Marx saw Jewish facial features as repulsive
On Majority Rights I note that Jews have now given up controlling the world!
************************************
ELSEWHERE
Bush-hating Jonathan Chait has come up with another lulu: "Liberalism's aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy". Aversion to dogma?! There could be few things more dogmatic than the many dictates of Leftist political correctness! Political correctness is in fact more than a dogma: It is a whole catechism of things you are not allowed to say, think, do or discuss. It is the n commandments of Leftism. It's a wonder there's no Index expurgatorius to go with it but I guess they don't need one judging by how seldom bookshops display conservative books. But "liberalism" has its saints, of course: St. Sharpton, St. Jackson, St. Clinton, St. Roosevelt, St. Derrida, St. Foucault, St. Castro, St. Lenin, etc. -- all of whom are as near to sinless and faultless as you can get.
Troubling events in South Africa: ""We will kill the whites, all of them; Afrikaans and English," rioting Pasma students and their leaders at the university's Mamelodi campus chanted on Friday. Students barricaded gates with burning tyres in an effort to prevent police from gaining access and dispersing the crowds. Screaming "revolution is the only solution" and "kill the police, burn their cars", more than 200 students charged around the campus tearing up the university's flag, burning tyres and damaging trees..... Mahlangu, deputy secretary of the Gauteng Pasma regional office, promised that blood would flow at the university's main campus in Hatfield. "We have had enough of racist students and their lecturers who profess to have our interests at heart. We are tired of being discriminated against because we cannot pay the fees and because we are not passing".
There is another stupid attempt here to portray the Bush administration and its Christian supporters as "Fascist". One wonders if these galoots ever read history. Fascist regimes ensure that both the schools and the press are under tight government control and say only those things which support the government line. The USA is so far away from that that GWB cannot even get all the schools to use phonics in teaching kids how to read! And if you think that the New York Times and CBS and all of the rest of them support the Bush administration, you live in a parallel universe! I have commented on this brain-dead accusation at greater length before. See here and here
Using their usual "projective" propaganda technique (accusing others of what are in fact your own faults) Leftists very often accuse conservatives of rigging the vote when they in fact are great practitioners of bogus voter registrations and "voting early and voting often" themselves. Powerline notes a case of voter fraud on behalf of the NAACP which has now actually resulted in a conviction.
Newspeak anyone? "In Western political history the big breakthrough came when classical liberals identified the human individual as having the right to liberty. This took centuries of development, but with John Locke and other such liberals it emerged as a solid, coherent idea. Every adult is sovereign, self-ruling, not a subject of others' will, be these others neighbors, family, bureaucrats, a monarch, the majority, or whoever. Professor Fisher, however, wants to assimilate all these often mutually exclusive ideas of liberty and freedom, so that every tradition -- including those actually quite antithetical to individual liberty -- in which the words have appeared is pacified."
My latest posting on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS records the words of a Leftist newspaper editor who resigned his job in disgust because the newspaper's readers made it too hard for him to inject his biases into what he published! These arrogant swine actually think it is their RIGHT to decide what the public will be allowed to know!
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx greatly admired a pro-German racist. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at the nature of the Holy Ghost.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Once again I pick out what I think are my best posts for the week:
On Dissecting Leftism I question the "gay gene" theory
On Greenie Watch I report on a Greenie faith-healing meeting.
On Political Correctness Watch I report on the incorrect sandwich issue at Rutgers
On Education Watch I note a movie about Communism with lessons for American academe
On Socialized Medicine I note how to kill a healthy baby and get away with it
On Gun Watch I note that Australia has a rising crime rate despite sweeping gun control
On A scripture blog I note that the immortal soul is a pagan idea rather than a scriptural idea
On Leftists as Elitists I note that socialism is inherently elitist
On MarxWords I note that Marx saw Jewish facial features as repulsive
On Majority Rights I note that Jews have now given up controlling the world!
************************************
ELSEWHERE
Bush-hating Jonathan Chait has come up with another lulu: "Liberalism's aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy". Aversion to dogma?! There could be few things more dogmatic than the many dictates of Leftist political correctness! Political correctness is in fact more than a dogma: It is a whole catechism of things you are not allowed to say, think, do or discuss. It is the n commandments of Leftism. It's a wonder there's no Index expurgatorius to go with it but I guess they don't need one judging by how seldom bookshops display conservative books. But "liberalism" has its saints, of course: St. Sharpton, St. Jackson, St. Clinton, St. Roosevelt, St. Derrida, St. Foucault, St. Castro, St. Lenin, etc. -- all of whom are as near to sinless and faultless as you can get.
Troubling events in South Africa: ""We will kill the whites, all of them; Afrikaans and English," rioting Pasma students and their leaders at the university's Mamelodi campus chanted on Friday. Students barricaded gates with burning tyres in an effort to prevent police from gaining access and dispersing the crowds. Screaming "revolution is the only solution" and "kill the police, burn their cars", more than 200 students charged around the campus tearing up the university's flag, burning tyres and damaging trees..... Mahlangu, deputy secretary of the Gauteng Pasma regional office, promised that blood would flow at the university's main campus in Hatfield. "We have had enough of racist students and their lecturers who profess to have our interests at heart. We are tired of being discriminated against because we cannot pay the fees and because we are not passing".
There is another stupid attempt here to portray the Bush administration and its Christian supporters as "Fascist". One wonders if these galoots ever read history. Fascist regimes ensure that both the schools and the press are under tight government control and say only those things which support the government line. The USA is so far away from that that GWB cannot even get all the schools to use phonics in teaching kids how to read! And if you think that the New York Times and CBS and all of the rest of them support the Bush administration, you live in a parallel universe! I have commented on this brain-dead accusation at greater length before. See here and here
Using their usual "projective" propaganda technique (accusing others of what are in fact your own faults) Leftists very often accuse conservatives of rigging the vote when they in fact are great practitioners of bogus voter registrations and "voting early and voting often" themselves. Powerline notes a case of voter fraud on behalf of the NAACP which has now actually resulted in a conviction.
Newspeak anyone? "In Western political history the big breakthrough came when classical liberals identified the human individual as having the right to liberty. This took centuries of development, but with John Locke and other such liberals it emerged as a solid, coherent idea. Every adult is sovereign, self-ruling, not a subject of others' will, be these others neighbors, family, bureaucrats, a monarch, the majority, or whoever. Professor Fisher, however, wants to assimilate all these often mutually exclusive ideas of liberty and freedom, so that every tradition -- including those actually quite antithetical to individual liberty -- in which the words have appeared is pacified."
My latest posting on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS records the words of a Leftist newspaper editor who resigned his job in disgust because the newspaper's readers made it too hard for him to inject his biases into what he published! These arrogant swine actually think it is their RIGHT to decide what the public will be allowed to know!
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx greatly admired a pro-German racist. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at the nature of the Holy Ghost.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Monday, February 21, 2005
REGULATION ROBBERY
What would you do with an extra $8,000 this year? Pay off your credit card debt? Fully fund your 2004 and 2005 I.R.A.? Make a down payment on a new car? On the other hand, if the government announced plans to increase your taxes by the same amount, you'd certainly raise a ruckus. That's probably why the government keeps quiet about exactly how much its regulations cost.
Economists Mark Crain and Thomas Hopkins did a study for the Small Business Administration and found that in the year 2000, federal regulations cost us $843 billion. That's $8,000 per household -- almost half the amount collected in federal taxes that year. In other words, Washington didn't overtly increase your tax burden last year. However, its policies cost each American household more than $8,000 in hidden regulatory expenses.
That's unfortunate, because while some federal regulations are justified, even critical, many aren't necessary. And Congress needs to identify which are which. ... The Bush administration can help out, too. The president should let all federal agencies know that reining in regulations is a priority. He also ought to continue strengthening the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget. Again, before a new regulation is put into place, the government should have to explain what it will accomplish and how much it will cost.....
Things have only gotten worse in recent years. Because of the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting reform law, businesses spend more than ever to comply with federal regulations. In fact, some firms have gone so far as to buy back their stock and retreat from public markets. That won't help the United States remain the world leader in capital markets. Simply put, our economy is over-regulated. There's a saying, "Thank goodness we're not getting all the government we're paying for." Well, if we reduce the burden of unnecessary regulations, we'll have less government -- and pay less for it.
More here
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
Good comment from Bill Vallicella: "It is difficult to get lefties to appreciate the moral equivalence of the two totalitarian movements because there is a tendency to think that the Commies had good intentions, while the Nazis did not. But this is false: both had good intentions. Both wanted to build a better world by eliminating the evil elements that made progress impossible. Both thought they had located the root of evil, and that the eradication of this root would usher in a perfect world. It is just that they located the root of evil in different places. Nazis really believed that Judentum ist Verbrechertum, as one of their slogans had it, that Jewry is criminality. They saw the extermination of Jews and other Untermenschen as an awful, but necessary, task on the road to a better world. Similarly with the Commie extermination of class enemies".
There is pretty accurate article here that says the Left can be divided into the stupid Left versus the Satanic Left. Excerpt: "The Stupid Left says it favors equality. The Satanic Left favors transferring power to itself so that it can oppress others. The Stupid Left supports Marxist groups all over the world because it thinks these are non-violent and favor pluralism. The Satanic Left supports them because they know these are violent and totalitarian. The Stupid Left thinks animals should be treated like humans. The Satanic Left thinks humans should be treated like animals".
The Fascism of the prewar Left: "Paterson was appalled by the love for state planning that ruled the literary intellectuals of the '30s. Many were fascists, many communists, but hardly any believed that individuals or markets should be left to run freely. The standard opinion of the time was that markets required technocratic planning. The political themes fully expressed in The God of the Machine began showing up in Paterson's columns (which were never strictly about reviewing books) in the '30s and early '40s. These ideological intimations led Edmund Wilson to dismiss her as irrelevant, declaring her 'the last surviving person to believe in those quaint old notions on which the republic was founded.'"
Yucky Africa: Many Africans are beginning to think that probably we chased the Europeans out too early. Some Africans are so disillusioned that they are nostalgic about those days when the Europeans were in absolute control. Africans have joined the rest of the outside world to refer to their homeland as a lost cause. An African man after a recent visit called his homeland "bush" and swore never to step in there again. He had thrown in the towel and turned his back permanently. Other Africans, who still care, do so reluctantly. Some are just waiting for their parents to die off before they finally slam the door on Africa. For the rest, it is a constant prayer that the immigration office will one day let them bring out their loved ones. Once that is accomplished, it is goodbye Africa.... An African-American kid was reported to have been asked by his teacher what he thought about Africa and he responded, "yucky, yucky". The same expression he uses when his mother asks him to taste broccoli or uncooked tomatoes".
Values matter: "About a decade ago, Columbia University professor Andrew Delbanco wrote an elegant book, The Death of Satan, in which he argued that America had lost the ability to speak in terms of evil. He called it a 'tragedy of the imagination,' and he was right. For decades, a therapeutic culture of 'understanding' was on the rise. Except for acts of racism and so-called homophobia, there was a mad rush to 'understand' evil people. Were they victims of a racist culture? Were they abused themselves? Were they expressing their natural frustration with the patriarchal capitalist system? Blah, blah, blah. The tragedy of the imagination was that we couldn't appreciate that evil is real and it exists."
Kinsey: "Kinsey was known as the great scientist of sex, the man who fearlessly and dispassionately sorted out the true nature of our sexuality from the false, unscientific beliefs that have for so long hidden the truth from us. The standard picture of Kinsey depicted during his lifetime was the dour scientist dressed in a lab coat, patiently sorting through reams of data with his equally reputable and objective coworkers. That picture of Kinsey does not reveal who Kinsey really was, however. In fact, such pictures were carefully staged by Kinsey and his "research" team as part of their ongoing propaganda campaign. Behind the scenes, we find the real Kinsey: a homosexual and a sado-masochist, bent on using the trappings of science to force his perversions upon society."
This is a rather encouraging article. Psychiatrists are actually beginning to recognize some criminals as "evil". Since psychiatrists normally belong to the "no such thing as right and wrong" brigade, it is a hopeful sign of sanity dawning.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels was a sponger too. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Matthew 25:46 -- "And they will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life"
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
What would you do with an extra $8,000 this year? Pay off your credit card debt? Fully fund your 2004 and 2005 I.R.A.? Make a down payment on a new car? On the other hand, if the government announced plans to increase your taxes by the same amount, you'd certainly raise a ruckus. That's probably why the government keeps quiet about exactly how much its regulations cost.
Economists Mark Crain and Thomas Hopkins did a study for the Small Business Administration and found that in the year 2000, federal regulations cost us $843 billion. That's $8,000 per household -- almost half the amount collected in federal taxes that year. In other words, Washington didn't overtly increase your tax burden last year. However, its policies cost each American household more than $8,000 in hidden regulatory expenses.
That's unfortunate, because while some federal regulations are justified, even critical, many aren't necessary. And Congress needs to identify which are which. ... The Bush administration can help out, too. The president should let all federal agencies know that reining in regulations is a priority. He also ought to continue strengthening the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget. Again, before a new regulation is put into place, the government should have to explain what it will accomplish and how much it will cost.....
Things have only gotten worse in recent years. Because of the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting reform law, businesses spend more than ever to comply with federal regulations. In fact, some firms have gone so far as to buy back their stock and retreat from public markets. That won't help the United States remain the world leader in capital markets. Simply put, our economy is over-regulated. There's a saying, "Thank goodness we're not getting all the government we're paying for." Well, if we reduce the burden of unnecessary regulations, we'll have less government -- and pay less for it.
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Good comment from Bill Vallicella: "It is difficult to get lefties to appreciate the moral equivalence of the two totalitarian movements because there is a tendency to think that the Commies had good intentions, while the Nazis did not. But this is false: both had good intentions. Both wanted to build a better world by eliminating the evil elements that made progress impossible. Both thought they had located the root of evil, and that the eradication of this root would usher in a perfect world. It is just that they located the root of evil in different places. Nazis really believed that Judentum ist Verbrechertum, as one of their slogans had it, that Jewry is criminality. They saw the extermination of Jews and other Untermenschen as an awful, but necessary, task on the road to a better world. Similarly with the Commie extermination of class enemies".
There is pretty accurate article here that says the Left can be divided into the stupid Left versus the Satanic Left. Excerpt: "The Stupid Left says it favors equality. The Satanic Left favors transferring power to itself so that it can oppress others. The Stupid Left supports Marxist groups all over the world because it thinks these are non-violent and favor pluralism. The Satanic Left supports them because they know these are violent and totalitarian. The Stupid Left thinks animals should be treated like humans. The Satanic Left thinks humans should be treated like animals".
The Fascism of the prewar Left: "Paterson was appalled by the love for state planning that ruled the literary intellectuals of the '30s. Many were fascists, many communists, but hardly any believed that individuals or markets should be left to run freely. The standard opinion of the time was that markets required technocratic planning. The political themes fully expressed in The God of the Machine began showing up in Paterson's columns (which were never strictly about reviewing books) in the '30s and early '40s. These ideological intimations led Edmund Wilson to dismiss her as irrelevant, declaring her 'the last surviving person to believe in those quaint old notions on which the republic was founded.'"
Yucky Africa: Many Africans are beginning to think that probably we chased the Europeans out too early. Some Africans are so disillusioned that they are nostalgic about those days when the Europeans were in absolute control. Africans have joined the rest of the outside world to refer to their homeland as a lost cause. An African man after a recent visit called his homeland "bush" and swore never to step in there again. He had thrown in the towel and turned his back permanently. Other Africans, who still care, do so reluctantly. Some are just waiting for their parents to die off before they finally slam the door on Africa. For the rest, it is a constant prayer that the immigration office will one day let them bring out their loved ones. Once that is accomplished, it is goodbye Africa.... An African-American kid was reported to have been asked by his teacher what he thought about Africa and he responded, "yucky, yucky". The same expression he uses when his mother asks him to taste broccoli or uncooked tomatoes".
Values matter: "About a decade ago, Columbia University professor Andrew Delbanco wrote an elegant book, The Death of Satan, in which he argued that America had lost the ability to speak in terms of evil. He called it a 'tragedy of the imagination,' and he was right. For decades, a therapeutic culture of 'understanding' was on the rise. Except for acts of racism and so-called homophobia, there was a mad rush to 'understand' evil people. Were they victims of a racist culture? Were they abused themselves? Were they expressing their natural frustration with the patriarchal capitalist system? Blah, blah, blah. The tragedy of the imagination was that we couldn't appreciate that evil is real and it exists."
Kinsey: "Kinsey was known as the great scientist of sex, the man who fearlessly and dispassionately sorted out the true nature of our sexuality from the false, unscientific beliefs that have for so long hidden the truth from us. The standard picture of Kinsey depicted during his lifetime was the dour scientist dressed in a lab coat, patiently sorting through reams of data with his equally reputable and objective coworkers. That picture of Kinsey does not reveal who Kinsey really was, however. In fact, such pictures were carefully staged by Kinsey and his "research" team as part of their ongoing propaganda campaign. Behind the scenes, we find the real Kinsey: a homosexual and a sado-masochist, bent on using the trappings of science to force his perversions upon society."
This is a rather encouraging article. Psychiatrists are actually beginning to recognize some criminals as "evil". Since psychiatrists normally belong to the "no such thing as right and wrong" brigade, it is a hopeful sign of sanity dawning.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels was a sponger too. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Matthew 25:46 -- "And they will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life"
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Sunday, February 20, 2005
GAY GENE OR GAY VIRUS?
There's a VERY interesting interview with an expert in population biology, Gregory Cochran, here on the subject of the so-called "gay gene" -- a gene nobody has been able to find. I didn't realize that the rate of discordance among indentical twins was so high. Identical twins are normally identical in just about EVERYTHING so the fact that only one of a pair of identical twins tends to be homosexual is most telling. It is just about as good a proof of NON-genetic causation as you can get. The idea that homosexuality is caused by such environmental influences as poor social skills or a female-dominated home would seem to be ruled out by the twin studies too as identical twins also tend to have a very similar environment as well as identical genes. There is another article by Cochran here setting out his thinking on the matter. Basically, he says that if genes and upbringing don't make you homosexual, viruses probably do. You can actually "catch" homosexuality. If ever his theories become widely known, I think his life will be in danger. At the least there would be attempts to lock him up for "hate speech".
I think, however, that he overlooks an important third possibility -- inadequate nutrition in utero. And, strangely, that could also explain the discordant findings among monozygotic twins -- via intra-uterine competition. Intra-uterine competition? Sometimes identical twins will come out looking very different because some accident of placenta placement has caused one twin to get a far better supply of blood and its nutrients than the other twin got. And if homosexuality is caused by an abnormality of fetal brain development -- as has often been suggested -- poor fetal nutrition generally (including that caused by intra-uterine competition) could be the cause of it. So I wouldn't start dodging all contact with homosexuals yet.
I disagree partly with Cochran's explanation for Jewish intelligence too. He seems to think that the Askenazim have been heavily endogamous. Endogamy is certainly their law but it is much belied by appearances. Many Askenazis are of a distinctly Mediterranean appearance but there are also lots who are distinctly Nordic in appearance. I have known several Jews of Lithuanian origin and they look an awful lot like other Lithuanians (very fair) to me. So I think one of Cochran's basic assumptions is almost certainly wrong -- though I can think of several ways out of the problem -- saying that the exogamy predated the selective pressures on IQ, for instance.
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
This report by Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California -- saying that the recent small rise in the earth's temperature can only be explained by man-made gas emissions -- has got an amazing amount of publicity. But the report has yet to be subjected to peer review, let alone be published in an academic journal. It shows how desperate the global warmers have got for any shred of comfort. The language of the author of the report -- that "rational" people could not doubt his conclusions -- has certainly got more to do with Barnum than science. I suppose the amusing part is that the warmers have finally found some real-world data that their models fit. Most real-world data does not. I guess they had to get lucky eventually.
But is that enough? "Television is responsible for the deaths of 20,000 Germans a year, according to a professor of psychiatry".
I noted yesterday a letter from Susan Estrich complaining that the L.A. Times did not print enough stuff written by women -- but only HER sort of woman counted, of course. A reader has forwarded me a picture of Ms Estrich which I have posted here (or here). It seems to tell us all we need to know about that particular lady. One should feel sorry for her, I guess.
FDR's failed "New Deal": "In 1939, after seven years of massive government intervention into the marketplace from a phalanx of ABC bureaucracies invented by Roosevelt's planners and a convoluted array of opportunist economic programs, we were as firmly and as deeply mired in the Depression as before. "In his first two full terms of eight years," writes biographer John T. Flynn, "President Roosevelt never produced any recovery whatever. When he was elected there were 11,586,000 persons unemployed. In 1939 -- seven years later -- when the war struck in Europe, there were still 11,369,000 persons unemployed. These figures are supplied by the American Federation of Labor. In 1932 when he was elected there were 4,155,000 households with 16,620,000 persons on relief. In 1939, seven years later, there were 4,327,000 households with 19,648,000 persons on relief. In the presence of these undisputed facts how can any sober-minded citizen suppose that Mr. Roosevelt brought recovery to the United States?"
Howard Dean, leader of the bikepath Left: "The essential characteristic of the Bike Path Left is its passion for lifestyle issues. Dean was famously the governor of Vermont, where lifestyle has become a religion for its urbane yet fashionably rustic citizenry. The flinty old Vermont of yore has given way to the Vermont of Architectural Digest and wealthy transplants from New York and Boston. Dean represented this transformation perfectly.... Simply because the BPL cherishes lifestyle politics doesn't mean it is always laid-back. Dean is, famously, a man of considerable rage. Just this week he remarked that he "hates Republicans." (Presumably all of those bumper stickers in Burlington proclaiming that "Hate is not a family value" will have to be scraped off.) And as the original bike path fight demonstrates, his passion about the importance of lifestyle trumps his faith in more traditional arrangements. Dean signed the first same-sex partnership law and is now a vocal advocate for gay marriage. This isn't a petty issue like a bike path"
A question for the Left: on what basis do you judge that Hitler was bad? : "After all, the left does not believe in Judeo-Christian morality, but rather embraces moral relativism. Moral relativism is a philosophy that holds there are no fixed values, that all value judgments on behavior have to be considered within the context of the culture of the times and the society in which they occur. No absolutes for them, as they ridicule George Bush and Ronald Reagan for using the simplistic and embarrassing term "evil" to describe foes. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is a typical leftist mantra reflecting this mindset. So, what moral or philosophical basis does the left have to prove that Hitler's storm troopers and Stuka bomber pilots who overran Europe were not "freedom fighters"? Wasn't Germany the victim of the Versailles Accords that ended WWI, with humiliating and punitive penalties placed on them just for losing the war?"
There seems to be a fair bit of discussion lately about advertising and blog ethics -- e.g. here. All I can say is that I will never put up any advertising on any site of mine nor will I take money to promote anything. I live simply and already have all the money I want. I do however use various "free" hosting services to make some of my files accessible on the net and those services put up advertising to pay their way. What they put up, however, is their business, not mine. I neither notice nor care. When new bloggers ask me to help them promote their blogs, however, I do often oblige them with a link. But the payment I get for that is described in Ecclesiastes 11:1.
Wicked Thoughts has just put up some hilarious stuff -- particularly good if you get Jewish humour.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx put his writing before his family. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" shows that the immortal soul is not a Biblical idea.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
There's a VERY interesting interview with an expert in population biology, Gregory Cochran, here on the subject of the so-called "gay gene" -- a gene nobody has been able to find. I didn't realize that the rate of discordance among indentical twins was so high. Identical twins are normally identical in just about EVERYTHING so the fact that only one of a pair of identical twins tends to be homosexual is most telling. It is just about as good a proof of NON-genetic causation as you can get. The idea that homosexuality is caused by such environmental influences as poor social skills or a female-dominated home would seem to be ruled out by the twin studies too as identical twins also tend to have a very similar environment as well as identical genes. There is another article by Cochran here setting out his thinking on the matter. Basically, he says that if genes and upbringing don't make you homosexual, viruses probably do. You can actually "catch" homosexuality. If ever his theories become widely known, I think his life will be in danger. At the least there would be attempts to lock him up for "hate speech".
I think, however, that he overlooks an important third possibility -- inadequate nutrition in utero. And, strangely, that could also explain the discordant findings among monozygotic twins -- via intra-uterine competition. Intra-uterine competition? Sometimes identical twins will come out looking very different because some accident of placenta placement has caused one twin to get a far better supply of blood and its nutrients than the other twin got. And if homosexuality is caused by an abnormality of fetal brain development -- as has often been suggested -- poor fetal nutrition generally (including that caused by intra-uterine competition) could be the cause of it. So I wouldn't start dodging all contact with homosexuals yet.
I disagree partly with Cochran's explanation for Jewish intelligence too. He seems to think that the Askenazim have been heavily endogamous. Endogamy is certainly their law but it is much belied by appearances. Many Askenazis are of a distinctly Mediterranean appearance but there are also lots who are distinctly Nordic in appearance. I have known several Jews of Lithuanian origin and they look an awful lot like other Lithuanians (very fair) to me. So I think one of Cochran's basic assumptions is almost certainly wrong -- though I can think of several ways out of the problem -- saying that the exogamy predated the selective pressures on IQ, for instance.
*********************************
ELSEWHERE
This report by Tim Barnett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California -- saying that the recent small rise in the earth's temperature can only be explained by man-made gas emissions -- has got an amazing amount of publicity. But the report has yet to be subjected to peer review, let alone be published in an academic journal. It shows how desperate the global warmers have got for any shred of comfort. The language of the author of the report -- that "rational" people could not doubt his conclusions -- has certainly got more to do with Barnum than science. I suppose the amusing part is that the warmers have finally found some real-world data that their models fit. Most real-world data does not. I guess they had to get lucky eventually.
But is that enough? "Television is responsible for the deaths of 20,000 Germans a year, according to a professor of psychiatry".
I noted yesterday a letter from Susan Estrich complaining that the L.A. Times did not print enough stuff written by women -- but only HER sort of woman counted, of course. A reader has forwarded me a picture of Ms Estrich which I have posted here (or here). It seems to tell us all we need to know about that particular lady. One should feel sorry for her, I guess.
FDR's failed "New Deal": "In 1939, after seven years of massive government intervention into the marketplace from a phalanx of ABC bureaucracies invented by Roosevelt's planners and a convoluted array of opportunist economic programs, we were as firmly and as deeply mired in the Depression as before. "In his first two full terms of eight years," writes biographer John T. Flynn, "President Roosevelt never produced any recovery whatever. When he was elected there were 11,586,000 persons unemployed. In 1939 -- seven years later -- when the war struck in Europe, there were still 11,369,000 persons unemployed. These figures are supplied by the American Federation of Labor. In 1932 when he was elected there were 4,155,000 households with 16,620,000 persons on relief. In 1939, seven years later, there were 4,327,000 households with 19,648,000 persons on relief. In the presence of these undisputed facts how can any sober-minded citizen suppose that Mr. Roosevelt brought recovery to the United States?"
Howard Dean, leader of the bikepath Left: "The essential characteristic of the Bike Path Left is its passion for lifestyle issues. Dean was famously the governor of Vermont, where lifestyle has become a religion for its urbane yet fashionably rustic citizenry. The flinty old Vermont of yore has given way to the Vermont of Architectural Digest and wealthy transplants from New York and Boston. Dean represented this transformation perfectly.... Simply because the BPL cherishes lifestyle politics doesn't mean it is always laid-back. Dean is, famously, a man of considerable rage. Just this week he remarked that he "hates Republicans." (Presumably all of those bumper stickers in Burlington proclaiming that "Hate is not a family value" will have to be scraped off.) And as the original bike path fight demonstrates, his passion about the importance of lifestyle trumps his faith in more traditional arrangements. Dean signed the first same-sex partnership law and is now a vocal advocate for gay marriage. This isn't a petty issue like a bike path"
A question for the Left: on what basis do you judge that Hitler was bad? : "After all, the left does not believe in Judeo-Christian morality, but rather embraces moral relativism. Moral relativism is a philosophy that holds there are no fixed values, that all value judgments on behavior have to be considered within the context of the culture of the times and the society in which they occur. No absolutes for them, as they ridicule George Bush and Ronald Reagan for using the simplistic and embarrassing term "evil" to describe foes. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is a typical leftist mantra reflecting this mindset. So, what moral or philosophical basis does the left have to prove that Hitler's storm troopers and Stuka bomber pilots who overran Europe were not "freedom fighters"? Wasn't Germany the victim of the Versailles Accords that ended WWI, with humiliating and punitive penalties placed on them just for losing the war?"
There seems to be a fair bit of discussion lately about advertising and blog ethics -- e.g. here. All I can say is that I will never put up any advertising on any site of mine nor will I take money to promote anything. I live simply and already have all the money I want. I do however use various "free" hosting services to make some of my files accessible on the net and those services put up advertising to pay their way. What they put up, however, is their business, not mine. I neither notice nor care. When new bloggers ask me to help them promote their blogs, however, I do often oblige them with a link. But the payment I get for that is described in Ecclesiastes 11:1.
Wicked Thoughts has just put up some hilarious stuff -- particularly good if you get Jewish humour.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx put his writing before his family. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" shows that the immortal soul is not a Biblical idea.
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Saturday, February 19, 2005
EXHIBITIONISTS GET MORE THAN THEY BARGAIN FOR
Lots of people like this news item:
"When 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail. What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement. "We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs," one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. "I've never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view." Another said: "I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot." Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: "Sod off, Swampy."
Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force. "The Kyoto Protocol has modest aims to improve the climate and we need huge aims," a spokesman said. Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. "The violence was instant," Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said. "They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us." When a trader left the building shortly before 2pm, using a security swipe card, a protester dropped some coins on the floor and, as he bent down to pick them up, put his boot in the door to keep it open.
Two minutes later, three Greenpeace vans pulled up and another 30 protesters leapt out and were let in by the others. They made their way to the trading floor, blowing whistles and sounding fog horns, encountering little resistance from security guards. Rape alarms were tied to helium balloons to float to the ceiling and create noise out of reach. The IPE conducts "open outcry" trading where deals are shouted across the pit. By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to paralyse trading. But they were set upon by traders, most of whom were under the age of 25. "They were kicking and punching men and women indiscriminately," a photographer said. "It was really ugly, but Greenpeace did not fight back." Mr Beresford said: "They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement."
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Greenie restrictions on new housing come home to roost "A new report Wednesday fueled concerns that the high cost of doing business in Los Angeles and much of California puts the region at a serious disadvantage in trying to compete for high-tech businesses against less-expensive Western and Midwestern cities.... "The harsh reality is your state is suffering today not only from a corporate exodus but intellectual capacity (too). Some of your best and brightest college graduates cannot afford to live here; that's a huge problem," said John Boyd, whose company's report is based on information from corporate executives."
Islamic gratitude to GWB? "The Islamic Prophet Muhammad's original choice of a successor, Ali, was a Shiia whose claims were never recognized by the early leaders of the Islam. Ironically, it is the "infidel" Bush who had made it possible to restore legitimate Shiite rule to Iraq. And it is the "evangelical" Bush who has finally made more legitimate the incoherent war at home and abroad by pushing for democratic reforms in Iraq even when the silent goals of the war remain geo-strategic"
Israel betrayed by its own politicians: "As a courageous refusenik in the Soviet Union, Natan Sharansky became a hero to free people everywhere - nowhere more so than in Israel, the country to which he yearned to emigrate. His fight for human rights cost him nine years in the KGB's dungeons, and when, in February 1986, he finally arrived in the land of his forefathers, it was to an ecstatic welcome by thousands of cheering Israelis.... But if Sharansky's thinking carries great weight in America, in his adopted homeland it carries none at all. ``I understand that in the Soviet Union your ideas were important,'' Israel's current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, told him last year, ``but unfortunately they have no place in the Middle East.'' No place, in other words, for the idea that peace between Israel and the Palestinians depends not on unilateral Israeli concessions but on the transformation of the Palestinian Authority. No place for the idea that freedom and democracy can have the same power in the West Bank and Gaza that they had in Japan and Germany after World War II. No place for the idea that Palestinian terror and violence will never cease until Palestinian dictatorship and repression cease".
Farmed robbery: "In his newly-released federal budget President George W. Bush promises to reduce farm subsidies. Predictably, on the day the budget was made public there were well-choreographed 'protests' by all the usual suspects, mostly millionaire corporate farmers camped out at the Mayflower or Four Seasons hotels in Washington, D.C. for a few days. The 'protesters' made it on to the evening news in their latest attempt to dupe the American public into believing that they were not really the millionaire owners of large corporate farms, but lowly dust bowl families just trying to make ends meet and feed their families."
EU arrogance faltering: "Probably it's a bit too much to say, on the eve of President George W. Bush's fence-mending trip to Europe next week, that a specter is haunting Europe, but let's say it anyway: A specter is haunting Europe and it is the possibility, after the elections in Iraq, that perhaps Bush is less of a dangerous bungler than so many Europeans previously believed him to be.... Certainly there has been no seismic alteration of the European view. Yet there are at least some strong anecdotal signs that Europeans are struggling with the difficult proposition that there might even be in the Bush doctrine of messianic democracy a dollop of what the other President Bush famously called "the vision thing.".... . ."The pictures of the people voting, even though it's hard to say it was worth two years of war, psychologically it was a turning point," Hassner said.... "
Tim Worstall spells out well the inconvenient fact (for Leftists) that the bigger the government gets the more they have to tax the poor. There are just not enough taxable rich people to go around once the State gets beyond a certain size.
An amusing email from a feminist moonbat accusing the Los Angeles Times of not printing enough stuff written by women. But what got her really charged was one particular story they DID print -- you guessed it -- by a woman! -- as the L.A. Times editor subsequently pointed out.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that he thought Jews looked ugly. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Isaiah 9:6 -- "And his name will be called "Wonderful Counseller, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace"
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 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.
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.
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"
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Lots of people like this news item:
"When 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail. What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement. "We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs," one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. "I've never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view." Another said: "I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot." Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: "Sod off, Swampy."
Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force. "The Kyoto Protocol has modest aims to improve the climate and we need huge aims," a spokesman said. Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. "The violence was instant," Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said. "They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us." When a trader left the building shortly before 2pm, using a security swipe card, a protester dropped some coins on the floor and, as he bent down to pick them up, put his boot in the door to keep it open.
Two minutes later, three Greenpeace vans pulled up and another 30 protesters leapt out and were let in by the others. They made their way to the trading floor, blowing whistles and sounding fog horns, encountering little resistance from security guards. Rape alarms were tied to helium balloons to float to the ceiling and create noise out of reach. The IPE conducts "open outcry" trading where deals are shouted across the pit. By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to paralyse trading. But they were set upon by traders, most of whom were under the age of 25. "They were kicking and punching men and women indiscriminately," a photographer said. "It was really ugly, but Greenpeace did not fight back." Mr Beresford said: "They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement."
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Greenie restrictions on new housing come home to roost "A new report Wednesday fueled concerns that the high cost of doing business in Los Angeles and much of California puts the region at a serious disadvantage in trying to compete for high-tech businesses against less-expensive Western and Midwestern cities.... "The harsh reality is your state is suffering today not only from a corporate exodus but intellectual capacity (too). Some of your best and brightest college graduates cannot afford to live here; that's a huge problem," said John Boyd, whose company's report is based on information from corporate executives."
Islamic gratitude to GWB? "The Islamic Prophet Muhammad's original choice of a successor, Ali, was a Shiia whose claims were never recognized by the early leaders of the Islam. Ironically, it is the "infidel" Bush who had made it possible to restore legitimate Shiite rule to Iraq. And it is the "evangelical" Bush who has finally made more legitimate the incoherent war at home and abroad by pushing for democratic reforms in Iraq even when the silent goals of the war remain geo-strategic"
Israel betrayed by its own politicians: "As a courageous refusenik in the Soviet Union, Natan Sharansky became a hero to free people everywhere - nowhere more so than in Israel, the country to which he yearned to emigrate. His fight for human rights cost him nine years in the KGB's dungeons, and when, in February 1986, he finally arrived in the land of his forefathers, it was to an ecstatic welcome by thousands of cheering Israelis.... But if Sharansky's thinking carries great weight in America, in his adopted homeland it carries none at all. ``I understand that in the Soviet Union your ideas were important,'' Israel's current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, told him last year, ``but unfortunately they have no place in the Middle East.'' No place, in other words, for the idea that peace between Israel and the Palestinians depends not on unilateral Israeli concessions but on the transformation of the Palestinian Authority. No place for the idea that freedom and democracy can have the same power in the West Bank and Gaza that they had in Japan and Germany after World War II. No place for the idea that Palestinian terror and violence will never cease until Palestinian dictatorship and repression cease".
Farmed robbery: "In his newly-released federal budget President George W. Bush promises to reduce farm subsidies. Predictably, on the day the budget was made public there were well-choreographed 'protests' by all the usual suspects, mostly millionaire corporate farmers camped out at the Mayflower or Four Seasons hotels in Washington, D.C. for a few days. The 'protesters' made it on to the evening news in their latest attempt to dupe the American public into believing that they were not really the millionaire owners of large corporate farms, but lowly dust bowl families just trying to make ends meet and feed their families."
EU arrogance faltering: "Probably it's a bit too much to say, on the eve of President George W. Bush's fence-mending trip to Europe next week, that a specter is haunting Europe, but let's say it anyway: A specter is haunting Europe and it is the possibility, after the elections in Iraq, that perhaps Bush is less of a dangerous bungler than so many Europeans previously believed him to be.... Certainly there has been no seismic alteration of the European view. Yet there are at least some strong anecdotal signs that Europeans are struggling with the difficult proposition that there might even be in the Bush doctrine of messianic democracy a dollop of what the other President Bush famously called "the vision thing.".... . ."The pictures of the people voting, even though it's hard to say it was worth two years of war, psychologically it was a turning point," Hassner said.... "
Tim Worstall spells out well the inconvenient fact (for Leftists) that the bigger the government gets the more they have to tax the poor. There are just not enough taxable rich people to go around once the State gets beyond a certain size.
An amusing email from a feminist moonbat accusing the Los Angeles Times of not printing enough stuff written by women. But what got her really charged was one particular story they DID print -- you guessed it -- by a woman! -- as the L.A. Times editor subsequently pointed out.
My latest posting on MarxWords shows that he thought Jews looked ugly. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at Isaiah 9:6 -- "And his name will be called "Wonderful Counseller, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace"
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 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.
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.
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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Eugenio Pacelli, a righteous Gentile, a true man of God and a brilliant Pope
