LEFTIST TAX CUTS

I think American conservatives will rather envy Australians if they hear the new Australian Labor Party policies announced today at the National Press Club by party leader and leader of the Federal Opposition, Simon Crean. The A.L.P. is the more Leftist of Australia�s two major political parties but Crean announced today many sensible and economically rational policies accompanied by only vague �fairness� rhetoric. Strikingly, he also committed a future government led by him to wide-ranging tax cuts. Do the US Democrats campaign on a platform of tax cuts?

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MUSLIM CRUELTY TO ANIMALS OK?

This article points out that the British Labour Government is trying to ban traditional British foxhunting on the pretext that it cruel to animals while not even mentioning the equallty cruel and equally traditional Muslim method of slaughtering cattle. Hypocrisy once again.

Thanks to Conservative Commentary for the link.

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ADVERTISING AND THE STORY OF THE EDSEL

One of the favourite whipping-boys of the Left is the advertising industry. If people want various non-essential material goods, that is presented by Leftists not as something legitimate and reasonable but as the result of demand �artificially� created by big business via advertising. All the evidence shows, however, that advertising in fact CANNOT create demand that does not exist. There has to be a pre-existing need or desire there first before the advertising will work. So advertising has to find some real need to work on.

Advertising people all know that, of course, and do their best to find a need at which they can target their products. Even then, however, they can come a cropper. The most spectacular example of a failure of advertising to create demand for a product was the stylistically different�Edsel� car produced and promoted by Ford from 1957. Ford spent a record amount of money on advertising and hired top advertising brains to promote the Edsel to absolutely no avail. The model was a complete flop.

So next time you hear Leftists complaining about the way advertising can create demand, ask them to tell that to the guys who tried to sell the Edsel.

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MY SON THE MARINE

A very moving and very honest story here that any father could relate to. When his son joined the US Marine Corps what he encountered from his erstwhile �liberal� friends can only be described as ignorance.

Link via The Right Track.

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CANADIAN �MORAL� SUPERIORITY?

This article from Canada says that Canadians generally feel �morally superior� to Americans. What on earth is �moral� superiority? Being unable to provide prompt health care for your citizens? Having only two-thirds of the average income of the USA? Getting a free-ride off the US taxpayer�s defence expenditure? I guess the average Bulgarian too could feel �morally� superior if he put his mind to it.

Not all Canadians agree with this tosh, however: Colby Cosh for one.

Some details about waiting times in the nationalized Canadian health system can be found here

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GUN-RELATED CRIME

Wow! Alex Robson has wiped the floor with Ken Parish over Australia�s ridiculous gun buyback policies.

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MONARCHY

Being both a libertarian and a monarchist is an unusual combination. The only blogger that I know of other than myself who holds such views is Redwood Dragon. I am pleased to see, therefore, that one of Britain�s most prolific libertarian writers -- Sean Gabb -- has also just written a lucid defence of the British monarchy.

My only quarrel with him is that he underestimates the support for the monarchy in Australia. There are many Australians -- mostly older and female -- here who quite openly declare that they �love� the Queen. And if your old Mum loves the Queen, you are going to be pretty constricted in saying much against the monarchy! And in our recent constitutional referendum -- fought specifically on whether to have the Queen or a political appointee as Head of State -- two thirds of Australians voted to retain the monarchy. How the Leftist wreckers must have hated that!

I also put up a defence of monarchy (in general) about two-thirds of the way through my article here.

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IRELAND

Seeing I have substantial Irish ancestry, I think I can risk an Irish joke:

We have often heard Cork called the Venice of Ireland, but have never heard Venice called the Cork of Italy

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