Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt

What FDR had in common with the other charismatic collectivists of the 30s. Excerpts:

On May 7, 1933, just two months after the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New York Times reporter Anne O'Hare McCormick wrote that the atmosphere in Washington was "strangely reminiscent of Rome in the first weeks after the march of the Blackshirts, of Moscow at the beginning of the Five-Year Plan..America today literally asks for orders." The Roosevelt administration, she added, "envisages a federation of industry, labor and government after the fashion of the corporative State as it exists in Italy." That article isn't quoted in Three New Deals, a fascinating study by the German cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch. But it underscores his central argument: that there are surprising similarities between the programs of Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler.

With our knowledge of the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II, we find it almost impossible to consider such claims dispassionately. But in the 1930s, when everyone agreed that capitalism had failed, it wasn't hard to find common themes and mutual admiration in Washington, Berlin, and Rome, not to mention Moscow. (Three New Deals does not focus as much on the latter.) Nor is that a mere historical curiosity, of no great importance in the era following democracy's triumph over fascism, National Socialism, and communism. Schivelbusch concludes his essay with the liberal journalist John T. Flynn's warning, in 1944, that state power feeds on crises and enemies. Since then we have been warned about many crises and many enemies, and we have come to accept a more powerful and more intrusive state than existed before the '30s.....

In the North American Review in 1934, the progressive writer Roger Shaw described the New Deal as "Fascist means to gain liberal ends." He wasn't hallucinating. FDR's adviser Rexford Tugwell wrote in his diary that Mussolini had done "many of the things which seem to me necessary." Lorena Hickok, a close confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt who lived in the White House for a spell, wrote approvingly of a local official who had said, "If [President] Roosevelt were actually a dictator, we might get somewhere." She added that if she were younger, she'd like to lead "the Fascist Movement in the United States." At the National Recovery Administration (NRA), the cartel-creating agency at the heart of the early New Deal, one report declared forthrightly, "The Fascist Principles are very similar to those we have been evolving here in America."

Roosevelt himself called Mussolini "admirable" and professed that he was "deeply impressed by what he has accomplished." The admiration was mutual. In a laudatory review of Roosevelt's 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, "Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices..Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism." The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised "Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies" and "the development toward an authoritarian state" based on the "demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest."

In 1973 one of the most distinguished American historians, John A. Garraty of Columbia University, created a stir with his article "The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression." Garraty was an admirer of Roosevelt but couldn't help noticing, for instance, the parallels between the Civilian Conservation Corps and similar programs in Germany. Both, he wrote, "were essentially designed to keep young men out of the labor market. Roosevelt described work camps as a means for getting youth `off the city street corners,' Hitler as a way of keeping them from `rotting helplessly in the streets.' In both countries much was made of the beneficial social results of mixing thousands of young people from different walks of life in the camps. Furthermore, both were organized on semimilitary lines with the subsidiary purposes of improving the physical fitness of potential soldiers and stimulating public commitment to national service in an emergency."

And in 1976, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan incurred the ire of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), pro-Roosevelt historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and The New York Times when he told reporters that "fascism was really the basis of the New Deal."

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Pro-Life Club Banned

You'd think that the girl was applying to start a heroin injecting room or something, perhaps a brothel or a porn shop, the way they're carrying on over it. You can bet your backside if it had been a pro-abortion group, they'd have found a way to accommodate!!
A Stafford County high school student is suing the county's school system for refusing to let her start an anti-abortion club. Colonial Forge High School Principal Lisa Martin denied the request for the club, saying it doesn't relate to the curriculum. In a letter to the student, Martin said the family life curriculum prohibits teachers from discussing abortion. But Cortman says the school has other clubs that don't appear to be directly linked with studies, like the Young Republicans and Young Democrats. FOXNews.
Er Principal Martin... you know those kids that you are supposed to teach and model to become tomorrow's leaders and good citizens, they were once babies you know. And this might come as a tremendous shock to you, but before that they were in their mother's wombs, and if they had been aborted, they wouldn't be in your school. Stay with me now Principal Martin, I know it's confusing but focus dammit, if they aren't in your school, there wouldn't be any need for you, you'd be out of a job, hanging around the local dumpster perhaps.

So it's in your best interests to encourage people to have more children, not less. And if that doesn't get through your titanium-thick skull, think of it this way, pro-life means encouraging human life and just so you know most parents, you know the ones that brought your pupils into the world, and normal folks are in favor of human life.

Police State - Hope you're sitting down

Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow. The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos. The move, enacted by the personal decree of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, will give police and security services a right they have long demanded: to delve at will into the phone records of British citizens and businesses.

But the same powers will also be handed to the tax authorities, 475 local councils, and a host of other organisations, including the Food Standards Agency, the Department of Health, the Immigration Service, the Gaming Board and the Charity Commission. Records will detail precisely what calls are made, their time and duration, and the name and address of the registered user of the phone. The files will even reveal where people are when they made mobile phone calls. By 2009 the Government plans to extend the rules to cover internet use: the websites we have visited, the people we have emailed and phone calls made over the net. Daily Mail.

Just the other day they put in laws to ban the lightbulb for those new expensive ones, they already punish you for having a car, soon they'll come for your toilet folks. You're going to have to ditch the phone and the internet now folks, thanks to the leftists in charge, there go your civil liberties and any right to privacy. You might want to look into old fashion methods like dead-drops and carrier pigeons. It's shameful how leftists insist Conservatives want to muzzle their free speech and civil liberties, yet here they are doing the same thing.

Teachers--yet again!

"Illinois Schools Canceling Christmas and Halloween to Avoid Offending Muslims

Another absolutely disgusting example of pre-emptive dhimmitude, in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism, right here in the US: First Jell-O, now Santa.

So long, Halloween parade. Farewell, Santa’s gift shop.
The holiday traditions are facing elimination in some Oak Lawn schools this year after complaints that the activities are offensive, particularly to Muslim students.
Final decisions on which of the festivities will be axed will fall to the principals at each of Ridgeland School District 122’s five schools, Supt. Tom Smyth said.

Parents expect that the announcement is going to add to the tension that has been building since officials agreed earlier this month to change the lunch menu to exclude items containing pork to accommodate Muslim students. News that Jell-O was struck from the menu caused such a stir that officials have agreed to bring it back. Gelatin is often made with tissue or bones of pigs or other animals.

That controversy now appears to have been been dwarfed by the holiday debate, which became so acrimonious Wednesday that police were called to Columbus Manor School to intervene in a shouting match among parents.

“It’s difficult when you change the school’s culture,” said Columbus Manor Principal Sandy Robertson.

Source LGF

And they're right on track:

Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education at Harvard, addressed the Association for Childhood Education International in April, 1972. He said:

“Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity…It’s up to you teachers to make all of these sick children well by creating the international children of the future.
The Midnight Sun
They're on track and will succeed because too many parents are too busy or too lazy or too ignorant to find out exactly what their children are being indoctrinated with--no wonder the leftist social engineers hate the Church, because that's all that presently stands between them and their goal.
I've written here before that anyone who values liberty must consider Christians as vital allies in the fight for the West--put aside trivial differences (heck, put aside MAJOR differences) and band together to defeat what is surely our common enemy.
I'm not a Catholic or a Presbyterian or a Lutheran or whatever (yet) but they and others have this in common--they value the sanctity of marriage and they recognise a moral code and duties to something higher than the State.
Without some kind of umbrella for us to gather beneath, without a common name and a common cause we'll remain a collection of individual voices howling impotently on the margins and we will lose.

Questioning 20th Century Warmth

Excerpt:

In 2006, an article appeared in Science magazine reconstructing the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere back to 800 AD based on 14 smoothed and normalized temperature proxies (e.g., tree ring records). Osborn and Briffa proclaimed at the time that "the 20th century is the most anomalous interval in the entire analysis period, with highly significant occurrences of positive anomalies and positive extremes in the proxy records." Obviously, concluding that the Northern Hemisphere has entered a period of unprecedented warmth is sure to make the news, and indeed, Osborn and Briffa's work was carried in papers throughout the world and was loudly trumpeted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that publishes the journal Science.

A recent issue of Science contains an article not likely to receive any press coverage at all. Gerd Buerger of Berlin's Institut fuer Meteorologie decided to revisit the work of Osborn and Briffa, and his results raise serious questions about the claim that the 20th century has been unusually warm. Buerger argues that Osborn and Briffa did not apply the appropriate statistical tests that link the proxy records to observational data, and as such, Osborn and Briffa did not properly quantify the statistical uncertainties in their analyses. Buerger repeated all analyses with the appropriate adjustments and concluded "As a result, the `highly significant' occurrences of positive anomalies during the 20th century disappear." Further, he reports that "The 95th percentile is exceeded mostly in the early 20th century, but also about the year 1000." Needless to say, Gerd Buerger is not going to win any awards from the champions of global warming - nothing is more sacred than 20th century warming!

The reconstruction of past temperatures is a science unto itself, and the library contains many journals dedicated to the field. We could easily locate an article a week presenting a temperature reconstruction from some part of the planet that would call into question the notion that the 20th century was a period of unusual warmth. You may recall many essays we presented over the past five years examining the "hockey stick" depiction of planetary temperature (little change for 900 years, and suddenly 100 years ago, the temperature shot up) so merrily adopted by Gore and many others.

A large and important article appeared recently in Earth-Science Reviews regarding a long-term reconstruction of temperatures from Russia's Lake Baikal. In case you have forgotten your geography lessons, Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake, it contains the world's largest volume of freshwater (20 percent of the global supply), and the lake has over 300 rivers flowing into it. Anson Mackay of University College London is the author of the article, and he notes that "the bottom sediments of the lake itself have never been directly been glaciated. Lake Baikal therefore, contains a potential uninterrupted paleoclimate archive consisting of over 7500 m of sedimentary deposits, extending back more than 20 million years." If that is not perfect enough, the Lake "is perhaps best well known for its high degree of biodiversity; over 2500 plant and animal species have been documented in Baikal, most of which are believed to be endemic." The Lake is a long way from the moderating effects of any ocean, and therefore, the Lake should experience large climatic fluctuations over long and short periods of time.

The trick to reconstructing temperatures here involves the shell remains of planktonic diatoms that have lived in the Lake for eons. During warm periods, some species of diatom phytoplankton flourish while during cold periods, some species flourish while most reduce production. Cores from the bottom of the Lake therefore contain a high-resolution temperature record for hundreds of thousands of years interpreted from biogenic silica left from the plankton.....

Of greater interest to us is what Lake Baikal can tell us about the most recent thousand years, and in particular, we are interested in the warming of the last 1000 years. Mackay notes that "between c. A.D. 850 and 1200, S. acus dominated the assemblage, most likely due to prevailing warmer and wetter climate that occurred in Siberia at this time." Well now, it certainly looks as if the Medieval Warm Period was noticed at the Lake. Next we learn that "Between c. A.D. 1200 and 1400, spring diatom crops growing under the ice decline in abundance, due in part to increased winter severity and snow cover on the lake, which is reflected in cooler early Siberian summers." The Little Ice Age then hit hard as Mackay finds "The diatom-inferred snow model suggests significantly increased snow cover on the lake between A.D. 1200 and 1775, which mirrors for the large part increases in snow cover in China during AD 1400-1900."

But here comes our favorite set of conclusions. Mackay writes "Diatom census data and reconstructions of snow accumulation suggest that changes in the influence of the Siberian High in the Lake Baikal region started as early as c. 1750 AD, with a shift from taxa that bloom during autumn overturn to assemblages that exhibit net growth in spring (after ice break-up). The data here mirror instrumental climate records from Fennoscandia for example, which also show over the last 250 years positive temperature trends and increasing early summer Siberian temperature reconstructions. Warming in the Lake Baikal region commenced before rapid increases in greenhouse gases, and at least initially, is therefore a response to other forcing factors such as insolation changes during this period of the most recent millennial cycle."

The Lake Baikal study shows that warming has occurred in the most recent century, but it is certainly nothing out of the ordinary and possibly to some degree explained by non-greenhouse forcing. The Osborn and Briffa proclamation that the 20th century was somehow out of the ordinary is certainly not confirmed by the incredible reconstruction from Lake Baikal.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Left & Militant Islam, No Link - No really!!

Venezuelan and Iranian presidents Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ratified their "anti-imperialist" stance and assured a "new time of justice" for the oppressed peoples around the world is starting. "All Venezuelans feel highly proud of being Iran's brothers, friends; and of walking together through the path of revolution, the path to the people's dignity and sovereignty. The path of the fight against imperialism!" said Chávez when welcoming his Iranian counterpart. The Venezuelan ruler branded his Iranian counterpart as "one of the greatest fighters battling against the empire around the world at the present time."

According to Chávez, "times are changing," and he praised Ahmadinejad as "one of the real fighters for real peace." Meanwhile, the Iranian ruler called Chávez his "brother of the heart," and "the great revolutionary of Latin America." According to Ahmadinejad, Chávez is "a great, revolutionary brave man who has devoted his life to the progress of the Venezuelan people, the revolution, and the awakening of Latin American peoples." el universal.com. Via The Jungle Hut.

As I suspected, UN - Weak & Cowardly

When I heard Ahmadinejad tell the world, that the nuclear issue was now 'closed', I didn't bother posting on it or saying anything, because what's the point, we are weak and won't do anything. What he said was as bad as saying "GET STUFFED" to the whole world and I knew we'd let him get away with it, so why bother making a fool of ourselves.
September 26, 2007 - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday denounced the U.N. Security Council as tarnished and undermined by U.S. and Western interference, and declared that "the nuclear issue is now closed" in his second major New York speech this week. Washington Times.
September 28, 2007 - In a setback for the United States, Iran won a two-month reprieve from new U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program on Friday. The Bush administration and its European allies ceded to Russian and Chinese demands to give Tehran more time to address international concerns.FOXNews.
As I suspected, the United Nations, completely and utterly useless, weak and cowardly, just the way leftists like it, is it any wonder they are always angling for everyone to submit to the rule of this weak, useless and cowardly organization? What they should have done, is tell Russia and China, if these SOBs don't come clean in 2 months, then we'll impose sanctions on them and also on you.

Magna Carta 2007 - an updated version to protect us from an overweening State

"IN A famous passage, the great 20th-century historian AJP Taylor wrote that 'in August 1914, a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the State, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked."
Source
The point the author of the article misses, of course, is that were the original principles to be adhered to, a "new" Magna Carta would be unnecessary.

Indoctrination 101

"This is a questionnaire that was distributed to pupils at a large mixed comprehensive school in Britain.
The seven questions included litter, racism, refugees, a petition against ‘British attacks on Iraq’, dolphin friendly tuna, racism again and then the last question:

‘You know that Israel’s actions against Palestinian civilians go against international law. Which of the following do you decide?

a) People like us in Britain should stop buying goods made in Israel, to help put pressure on Israel to stop attacking Palestinians (3)
b) This conflict has nothing to do with us and there is nothing we can
do (1)
c) Our government should put pressure on Israel to do what international law says, and cut down its occupation of Palestine (2)
d) We need to find out more about the conflict between Israel and Palestine before we say what we do (3)’

The numbers in brackets indicate the score a student would receive for their answer - the higher the better. The week before they had a number of photos they had to group together - one was an Israeli tank and a Palestinian boy that was put under ‘Oppression.’
This travesty is being perpetrated in ‘citizenship’ lessons."
via The Lone Voice

ACLU Cheers Hate Crimes Legislation

We read:


"The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded the passage of the Matthew Shepard Amendment to the Defense Department authorization bill that for the first time punishes hate crimes without infringing on free speech. The amendment, offered by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR), will broaden the definition of hate crimes and give more resources to local districts unable to investigate them single-handedly.....

In the past, the ACLU has not endorsed hate crimes legislation because the organization found that earlier versions of the legislation would have had a chilling effect on free speech. Instead, this amendment only allows speech to be considered evidence of a hate crime if it directly relates to the specific act. As a result, no one will be prosecuted based on a book that he or she read, a meeting or religious service that the defendant once attended or a group in which he or she is a member - unless those speech activities specifically related to a violent hate crime.

"The hate crimes legislation is more protective of free speech than any other criminal law in the entire U.S. code," said ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Chris Anders. "The amendment makes clear that violent hate crimes will be punished, but not mere thoughts, speech or belief. This legislation protects two fundamental American values because being able to live without the fear of being attacked just for being yourself is as American as the right to free speech."

Source

Sounds great, eh? So nobody will be prosecuted MERELY for thoughts or words. That's true. What they omit to mention, however, that words uttered in the CHAIN OF EVENTS leading up to some act of violence are criminalized. So if your Rabbi remarks in your hearing that the Torah orders stoning for homosexuals (which it does) and you then go out and assault a homosexual, then your Rabbi has committed a crime.

Clearly, the ACLU does NOT believe in free speech. They are lying through their teeth.

This could be seen as quite antisemitic and anti-Muslim legislation. Christians of course believe that homosexuals will be punished by God only (Romans chapter 1)


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Follow up - Cold and Contemptuous

A few days ago I posted about the weak sentences handed down to 4 scumbags who killed a Sydney publican, Shane Miles, a few years ago, well here's something to really make the blood boil. At the time most of us were furious at the weak sentence handed down, if anything there was at least some hope that the sentences would be increased on appeal, well guess what.
Prosecutors have ruled out any appeal against the sentences handed down to the men who killed a Sydney bar owner. Despite opposition from the victim's family, they were allowed to plead guilty to Manslaughter -- and will spend no more than five years in jail. Shane Miles's sister Erin Peterson has told 2GB’s Chris Smith a solicitor has called to tell them of the decision. “Now I’m really disgusted that I didn’t get a phone call from Nicholas Cowdry or from Patrick Barrett, who was the Crown prosecutor in our case,” she said. LiveNews.
Yeah it's just too hard, the guys dead now, move on folks, who cares what you lot think anyway, just be grateful they did something!! A while ago Shane Miles's sister said that one of the lawyers even told her, when they decided to lower the sentence, that he thought she was over it. As it was an allegation, I didn't make much of it at the time, well it certainly looks like there's some truth to that. There you go folks, if some scumbag were to kill you or rape you, just be grateful they don't throw your corpse into the local garbage tip, if they move their backsides to get the wet lettuce out for the crims, consider yourself blessed.

Woohoo - Diggers kick Taliban backside

AUSTRALIAN soldiers in Afghanistan have seen their heaviest fighting yet, holding off an attack from about 50 Taliban extremists. The four-hour firefight happened about eight kilometres north of Tarin Kowt in the Oruzgan province some time in the past week, defence said. From the cover of an orchard, the Taliban fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at Australian soldiers helping to construct an Afghan police outpost. Defence said the Taliban suffered heavy casualties in the attack, but would not release details.

More at The Australian, Pictures at Dept. of Defence. Please give us more pictures and video of our troops DOD, I certainly would love to spread the word, our Aussie Diggers are among the best and are our heroes. Would also love to promote our SAS, but I know they prefer to do their thing in the shadows, and know it well, they are out there in Afghanistan going toe-to-toe with and leaving bootprints on the asses of the hardest sons of bitches in the Taliban.

Soros supports checkbook science and astroturf immigration rallies

Excerpt:

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"? That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program. That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda. Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen's OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.

That's not the only case. Didn't the mainstream media report that 2006's vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer Turns out that wasn't what happened, either. Soros' OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases. So what looked like a wildfire grassroots movement really was a manipulation from OSI's glassy Manhattan offices. The public had no way of knowing until the release of OSI's 2006 annual report.

Meanwhile, OSI cash backed terrorist-friendly court rulings, too. Do people know last year's Supreme Court ruling abolishing special military commissions for terrorists at Guantanamo was a Soros project? OSI gave support to Georgetown lawyers in 2006 to win Hamdan v. Rumsfeld - for the terrorists. OSI also gave cash to other radicals who pressured the Transportation Security Administration to scrap a program called "Secure Flight," which matched flight passenger lists with terrorist names. It gave more cash to other left-wing lawyers who persuaded a Texas judge to block cell phone tracking of terrorists.

How did the NY Times and Washington Post miss this blockbuster report on a rich guy who is underwriting attacks on the government? Weren't they all in favor of getting money out of politics and not allowing the rich to dominate the political process?

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Socialised Medicine - Follow Up

As a follow up to my post the other day Take note America, I heard a caller to talk-back radio this morning, he was taking the Nurses to task over this. His point was that the nurses association and their members should not be blaming the government for the fiasco that happened this week at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital, he had a very valid point, read on.
Wards at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital are illegally understaffed, says NSW's peak nursing body. The NSW Nurses' Association blamed inadequate staffing levels and a lack of resources for Tuesday's miscarriage by a woman in a toilet at the hospital's emergency department. "At North Shore Hospital we've got some shifts on the wards there run without registered nurses, now that's illegal," association assistant general secretary Judith Kiejda told ABC Radio today. "There are not enough nursing resources and the nurses that are there are at the end of their tether and they're walking away." SMH.
His point was that at the last state election the nurses association backed the Labor government, health is a state responsibility in Australia, resources and funding are the responsibility of the state governments, if they are serious about doing something to address the shortages then they need to stop supporting Labor at every damn election. It'll be 16 years of Labor in NSW pretty soon and the health-care crisis didn't start last week. In addition they need to stop telling lies to the public.
Its an exciting time for nurses, so make it count and 'Vote to Save Nurses' this federal election. It is exciting times for the Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) as we launch a powerful four week TV and radio advertising campaign outlining the negative impact of the Howard government's industrial relations laws on nurses. The ads will be shown in Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, ACT, South Australia and the Northern Territory. NSW Nurses Association.
They have ads running on TV saying John Howard's IR laws are negatively affecting the Nurses, but it's incorrect, nurses in state hospitals are paid by the states, which is out of the Howard government's area. So if they want our support, then, to paraphrase that caller, they need to stop crying foul with the sheep and running with the wolves.

Global Moroning

Anyone catch the ABC tonight? Lateline? Tony Jones? Anyone catch the horror of the firestorms? The worst bushfires ever, ever, ever – ever have been, ever will be – for ever and ever?

Not one mention, of course, of the utter neglect from virtually all the ALP State Governments, and their utter failure at forest management, given their refusal to allow controlled burning to reduce fuel loads ‘cos dey r green and it hurt da nviroanmint’.

Nope – no way. It’s all down to climate change (according to your ABC). After all, why point the finger at a bunch of knee-jerk leftist fools, especially when ‘climate change’ provides a bunch of incompetent, fanatical dickheads with such a fabulous excuse for being – well – precisely what they are.

And people are thinking of voting these cretins in at a Federal level?

God help us.

Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Why did he have to proclaim his personal religious views as fact in a Western Civ course? Are atheist views privileged? I have taught many courses on many things over the years (at both secondary and tertiary level) and have never felt any need to denigrate Christian beliefs, even though I am an atheist. He must be a bitter man. Excerpt below:

A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted. Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday. "I'm just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master's degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job," Bitterman said.

Sarah Smith, director of the school's Red Oak campus, declined to comment Friday on Bitterman's employment status. The school's president, Barbara Crittenden, said Bitterman taught one course at Southwest. She would not comment, however, on his claim that he was fired over the Bible reference, saying it was a personnel issue. "I can assure you that the college understands our employees' free-speech rights," she said. "There was no action taken that violated the First Amendment."

Bitterman, who taught part time at Southwestern and Omaha's Metropolitan Community College, said he uses the Old Testament in his western civilization course and always teaches it from an academic standpoint. Bitterman's Tuesday course was telecast to students in Osceola over the Iowa Communications Network. A few students in the Osceola classroom, he said, thought the lesson was "denigrating their religion." ...

Bitterman said he called the story of Adam and Eve a "fairy tale" in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

A principled war. . .

As commented on recently, I have taken an edgier position. For edgier, read: totally fed up.

Why am I fed up? I’m sick and tired of reading the ramblings of barely coherent fools. I’m sick to death of reading idiotic clap trap from people who actually believe they have a brain (and that they use it for much more than an advanced sex gland).

Let’s start with the notion of ‘principled war’. To sum up, certain morons out there believe that because their Government (or another’s) takes a particular position (real or fanciful), then that dictates their position. Easy, yes? Let’s take a little test, then.

Let’s say Winston Churchill decided to declare war on Germany, not because it invaded Poland, but because he hated Krauts. Yes, that’s right, he despised the goons; the pointy heads; the strudelkopfs; damned Bosch; the depp. Let's say it was all about kicking Fritz just for the heck of it.

According to the bright lights of the left out there, if this were so, apparently we should not have fought. No – we could only fight if Winnie had had the purest of motives. It was all up to him. No matter the death camps, no matter the slaughter, no matter invasion, war, death and mayhem – no, it was all down to Winston and whether or not he wanted to poke a damned Kraut in the eye – or not.

So it is with Iraq. No matter what went before, no matter what anyone says, according to the pea-brains of the left, it’s all about oil (because they say so), and that’s it.

But let’s talk about principles, shall we? Let’s talk, for example, about the leader of the Greens in Australia, Senator Bob Brown, who was all for marching in and clobbering Saddam back in 1991. Let’s talk about the reason why he wanted to see that done: mass murder, military adventurism, dictatorship, despotism – oh, I could go on and on.

And he was right – absolutely right. And this is one of the very few occasions where you’ll read me saying something like that about Bob Brown.

Having said it, now let’s talk about why all of that suddenly changed. Why, all of a sudden, Saddam didn’t need to be removed anymore? Why, all of a sudden, Halabja’s thousands didn’t need to be acknowledged or avenged anymore? Why, all of a sudden, the threat that this creature and his mass-murdering regime posed, evaporated into thin air, along with the evil of the two wars he declared, and right along with the tremendous threat he posed, given he was devoting his nation’s wealth to waging war, both conventional and asymetrical?

Why did it change? It’s simple. None of it really mattered in the first place. Not to Bob. And certainly not to the left. And as soon as that position no longer suited, they dropped it like a hot-cake. And we need no further evidence than the steaming piles of sanctimonious crap they leave on our door step here, each and every day.

Don’t talk to me about 'left-wing' principles ever again.

There is no such thing.

Ultimate Global Warming Challenge Ups Prize Money to $125,000 for Proving Humans Cause Catastrophic Climate Change

Press release from junkscience.com

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge announced today that it raised to $125,000 the cash award to the first person to prove in a scientific manner that human emissions of greenhouse gases will cause catastrophic global climate change. (www.UltimateGlobalWarmingChallenge.com)

"Surprisingly no one has entered the contest yet," said Steven Milloy, founder and publisher of JunkScience.com and the sponsor of the Ultimate Global Warming Challenge. "I'm surprised since Al Gore, the United Nations and the mainstream media all seem to think that the notion of man made catastrophic global warming is a no-brainer," Milloy added.

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge was launched on Aug. 7, 2007 with the popular and highly rated YouTube video entitled, "Can You Save Al Gore?" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=LBCRStksqL0).

"It appears that $100,000 is not enough to spur Al Gore and other climate alarmists to submit their proofs that humans are causing global warming," explained Milloy. "If it's a matter of money, Al Gore and the alarmists should just come out and tell us what sum it will cost the rest of us to see what proof they have."

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

says it all....

"Convicted Terrorist Sympathizer Will Speak at 'Legal Ethics' Conference

Radical leftist attorney Lynne Stewart, convicted of acting as a messenger for the blind sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, has been invited to Hofstra University to speak at their “Legal Ethics Conference.”

Welcome to legal ethics in the 21st century."
LGF

Tolerant, peaceful leftists again

At a lively town hall meeting Sunday, billed as a discussion about "peace and accountability," emotions directed at U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer ranged from calm to screaming mad. Nearly all of it was about one subject: Impeachment of President Bush. A handful of speakers were hostile, calling Blumenauer a "coward" for not outright calling for Bush's impeachment. Some said Bush should be tried for treason. And one, to some applause, said the president should be executed. Most were civil, if blunt. Oregon Live. Via Sweetness & Light.

Take note America

This is what Socialized medicine ends up in eventually, you let that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama into power and it'll be "free" health-care, sure it's free (as in someone else is paying for it) and you'll be feeling warm and fuzzy for the first couple of years, but before long the money will dry up and this is what you'll get. But hey, it's free isn't it, just that they never said it would be adequate, timely or good, that's the fine print.
A pregnant woman has miscarried in a public toilet while waiting for assessment at Royal North Shore Hospital overnight. Despite complaining of acute pain, the woman was not seen by a doctor or given painkillers. The 35-year-old's husband had complained to emergency staff about the pain she was in, but was repeatedly told to sit back down and wait. Peter, who had taken the woman - his cousin's wife - to the hospital, has told 2GB’s Alan Jones the treatment they received was disgraceful.

“When we weren’t looking she walked off into the toilet and had a miscarriage,” he said. “People have come running [from] everywhere. I can’t go into the finer details, it’s just so gruesome, mate. It’s just something I wouldn’t say on air. She’s holding the little foetus in her hand, basically, and was wheeled out of the toilet in front of this packed waiting room.” "Not only that, but once they found her a bed they left her lying with the foetus between her legs for one hour." LiveNews.
I just listened to the husband of this woman, to summarize it, the treatment they received was cold and callous, as a miscarriage, there was nothing they (the hospital) could do so just take a seat and wait, apparently the foetus was still alive in the end. The wife was from Slovakia, left the disease that is communism and came here only to fall prey to another form of the same disgusting ideology. I'm sure the folks telling you about this crap in America won't tell you about any of this and they won't be around when that day comes.

And while you're at it, once you accept free health-care for all, then before long you'll hand over your guns as well, sounds swell doesn't it, take away all the guns and peace and utopia will descend upon you, you will no longer need to worry about shootings and violence. No need to bother with cleaning your guns or learning to shoot or watching your back, just dial 911 and the cops will be there in a jiffy with the wet lettuce to take care of the mis-understood scumbag, so you can put aside all that unpleasantness and go back to American Idol.
Two hotels have been targeted by armed men overnight - the latest in a spate of armed robberies across Sydney. Around 1230 am the two armed men entered the Hotel Ibis at Pyrmont, threatening staff with what’s believed to be a taser gun. It is believed the same men then struck half an hour later at Redfern. Staff at Bar Cleveland were threatened with a knife, the men fleeing again in a red four-wheel-drive. It’s the latest in a spate of armed robberies on clubs and hotels. Earlier this week a security guard was shot three times by thieves at a bowling club in Earlwood. LiveNews.
Just another day in Sydney folks. There was news about another shooting in another suburb in Sydney but I can't find the link. You know that taser gun they were talking about, just like with guns, we've got legislation and laws so high you couldn't pole-vault over it, to prevent people from carrying or using any of these items. As a law-abiding citizen if you go out and get them, I'm telling you, they'll call in the army if they have to, to lay the smack-down on your ass. But the criminals don't care, they carry what they want, when they want and they do what they want. This is the end product of handing over your guns, you hand over the streets as well.

A heavily politicized "human rights" bureaucracy in Australia

Post lifted from Leon Bertrand. See the original for links

Last week we had two separate stories on the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission's left-wing political bias. These stories can be found here and here. We have since found another example of bias for your enjoyment. ADCQ's Submission to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission for consideration in its Pay Equity Inquiry in June of this year reveals that the Commission explicitly favours a Socialist industrial relations system, again breaching the Public Sector Code of Conduct. For instance, the Commission advocates that it, or the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal, should set wages in private sector workplaces:

28. The QIRC discussion paper discusses possible amendments to the ADA to permit the Commission or Tribunal to make equal remuneration orders based on comparable worth. The discussion paper speculates whether it may be possible for an equal remuneration order based on comparable worth to direct that the specified employee or class of employees be reclassified.

Of course, recent thinking on industrial relations has come to the conclusion that employers, and not Government bodies, are best able to evaluate the worth of an employee's work. This coincides with the rise of economic rationalism and the decline of soft socialism. Nevertheless, the "fresh thinking" of the ADCQ essentially advocates a new form of centralised wage-fixing, as though Tribunal members are better judges of an employee's worth. As we have already shown, Tribunal members often know very little. In fact, the H.R. Nicholls society has pointed out that:

The inevitable problem which arises in every specialist tribunal, unstated by Justice Guidice, is the composition of these tribunals. The type of people who seek appointment to antidiscrimination tribunals, and often succeed in getting appointed, are often women, homosexual, and sometimes disabled (the former head of the Victorian tribunal was a blind woman). They tend to be steeped in student revolutionary culture of the 1970s and are living specimens of an undergraduate time warp. For them, employers, large and small, are the drivers of capitalist oppression. In this time warp, white, middle-aged males harass, intimidate, fail to promote, fail to hire and terminate employees as part of a conspiracy against non-Anglo-Saxons and women. Profoundly ignorant of how markets work in a free economy, and guided by chattering-class perceptions of how and why hiring and firing occurs, they are determined to bring light to the unenlightened and to expose the evils of the market economy. These tribunes are not judges at all-but social engineers sitting on the bench-inspired by the example of Sir William Deane, Sir Anthony Mason and Sir Gerard Brennan.

Being the left wing organisation that it is, the ADCQ couldn't resist a crack at Workchoices, the Australian left's second biggest obsession after climate change, the latter being a phenomenon which has occurred since the beginning of Earth's existence:

39. If there are no legislative constraints imposed by the WRA and Queensland does have power to adopt and implement legislative models similar to those implemented in Sweden or Quebec, United Kingdom and the Netherlands, France or Switzerland, the ADCQ submits that a strong mandatory model binding all employers should be passed in Queensland. Such a legislative model is likely to be one of the most effective means to have systemic outcomes, if combined with other measures to address the underlying causes of the gender pay gap. This type of measure becomes even more necessary, given that the individualisation and decentralisation of wage bargaining, and the removal of state based equal remuneration principles under WorkChoices eliminates some of the former means of reducing the gender pay gap.

The ADCQ goes on to express its strong support for Quebec's model which requires employers to "methodically report on their compliance" with bureaucratic regulations imposed by the state, including a "pay equity process" and a need to post results of such a process. Such a model might sound appealing to some, however from an economist's point of view there are hidden costs associated with over-regulation such as this. What ADCQ are proposing is that the compliance costs of business are increased, whilst their ability to run their businesses efficiency and flexibly are undermined. In short, it's a typical soft left proposition which, if implemented, would be detrimental to the Australian economy. On top of this authoritarian approach, ADCQ even proposes the following:

46. Preferred tenderer status should be conferred by the Government on those organisations that have undertaken an approved gender pay equity audit and have taken action to achieve pay equity at all levels of their organisation. The QIRC discussion paper notes that this measure has been introduced in Switzerland. Public procurement policies are increasingly being used internationally to further social goals including equality in employment. Procurement policies can attain these objectives by requesting contractors to modify the gender, racial or ability/disability make up of their workforce, or by encouraging contactors who are female or belong to racial or ethnic minorities to partake in public tenders. The USA, South Africa and Europe are all using procurement policies to promote equality in the workplace.

Whilst ADCQ is designed to fight against discrimination, it keenly wishes to implement AA, a form of discrimination that the left promotes. Again, there are hidden costs to the economy if you force employers to hire people for reasons other than merit. But of course, just like the rest of the soft left, ADCQ seems oblivious to this. Further mandatory regulations ADCQ wish to impose on the very businesses that generate the wealth that funds ADCQ include:

* Introduce a 14 week paid maternity leave scheme (recommendation 13).

* Phase in a more comprehensive scheme consisting of:

a) At a minimum, two weeks paid paternity leave to be taken at the birth of the child; and

b) A further 38 weeks of paid paternal leave that is available to either parent (recommendation 14).


Again, this clearly shows that ADCQ believes that businesses are generally bottomless pits of money that can be asked to fund virtually anything, even if they don't receive a cent in return. The irony of course is that compulsory paid maternal leave would actually result in discrimination to women: the very thing ADCQ seeks to avoid. It is quite apparent that the world ADCQ aims for is essentially a socialist utopia, completely divorced from economic realities which make it unworkable. It's the same dreamy utopianism which made Karl Marx pen that "religion is the people's opiate", not realising that he himself was befuddled with a rather similar narcotic.

This blog has already pointed out that women encounter few disadvantages, and are increasingly rising to the top. The only evidence that ADCQ is able to produce as evidence that Anti-Discrimination laws do not redress discrimination in the field of employment are the comments of another Tribunal leftist, namely Glynn J in the NSW Pay Equity Inquiry. It seems it has never occurred to the leftists at ADCQ that there are other reasons besides discrimination that are responsible for women generally earning less than men. For instance, women often choose to be the stay at home mothers for years, before they re-enter the workforce, thereby slowing their career development. Secondly evidence also suggests that in many cases men are more ambitious than women, and this is due to higher levels of pressure and expectation being imposed on men. ADCQ happily ignores all of these considerations, deciding to instead dogmatically assume that it is the best judge of the value of one's work. It is a push for socialism, under a new, post-Marxist guise.

In a previous post on the ADCQ, we pointed out some key principles enshrined in the Public Service Code of Conduct:

The Australian Public Service:is apolitical, performing its functions in an impartial and professional manner; provides a workplace that is free from discrimination and recognises and utilises the diversity of the Australian community it serves; has the highest ethical standards; is openly accountable for its actions, within the framework of Ministerial responsibility to the Government, the Parliament and the Australian public;is responsive to the Government in providing frank, honest, comprehensive, accurate and timely advice and in implementing the Government's policies and programs; delivers services fairly, effectively, impartially and courteously to the Australian public and is sensitive to the diversity of the Australian public;

Once again, with its push for obsolete left-wing policies, ADCQ has revealed that it is not a politically impartial organisation. Rather, it is an organisation whose political orientation can best be described as soft left, and which is quite apparently out of touch with the economic and social realities of the real world.


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Islamics and Leftists have a "logic" that serves their needs, not truth

With projection and denial prominent. Excerpt:

In the unconscious mind, where symmetrical logic rules the night, the stronger the emotion one is feeling, the more "symmetrical deductions" are likely to occur. For example, as Bomford writes, on a deep unconscious level, "one who hates has to believe that his or her hatred is returned." Note that this is a logical operation, only based upon a different sort of logic. This logic is no doubt the source of the psychotic fear of Israel in the Islamic world. Their unconscious hatred is so profound that it simultaneously reverses the relation, so that they can't help perceiving that Israel hates them. But Israelis just want to shop, raise their families, or read the Torah. They couldn't care less about Muslims, except to the extent that bloodthirsty Muslim barbarians harbor murderous rage toward them.

It's fine to hate evil, but in the Islamic world, what is hated is transformed into evil. Something is not hated because it is evil, but evil because it is hated. One could say the same of the left, which habitually fears what it eternally hates. The left cannot be comprehended unless one appreciates the extent of their unbound hatred. Once this is grasped, what seems illogical is suddenly seen to obey the dictates of symmetrical logic. For example, the unconscious feeling that I hate America and want us to lose in Iraq is transformed to General Petraeus is a traitor, or I am a racist becomes America is racist, or I am unbearably envious becomes the wealthy are engaged in class warfare against me!

Another characteristic of the unconscious is that it is timeless, in the sense that it can reverse temporal relations. For example, in the unconscious mind, if A is the cause of B, B can also be the cause of A. Thus, "before" and "after" become meaningless. Therefore, although we were inexcusably attacked by Islamists on 9-11, within minutes, leftists were saying that the real reason for the attack was that we had done something to offend Muslims.

Likewise, throughout the Cold War, leftist scholars wrote "revisionist" histories, in which the United States was the cause of the Cold War, or at least equally responsible for it. You will notice that there are no conservative revisionists who write, for example, that blacks were the cause of their own lynching, or that Japanese Americans were the cause of their own internment. You can only think in this manner if you are pathologically under the sway of unconscious symmetrical logic.

Also in the unconscious mind, there is no distinction between the memory of something that actually occurred vs. the memory of a fantasy. Here we can understand how and why the left is so prone to mythologizing the past, as their fantasies are mingled with reality. Thus, no amount of reality and asymmetrical logic will ever convince them that FDR made the Great Depression worse, not better, or that the black family only began to disintegrate after the imposition of all the "Great Society" programs of the mid to late '60s. No amount of logic could convince a leftist that his policies harm the "little guy," since his ruling myth, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is that he is here to rescue the hapless little guy (for whom the leftist always feels rich contempt in the unconscious mind, contempt which only seeps out everywhere).

One thing you will notice about the left is that they are passionate. Because the left is guided by feelings and intentions, they are blind to the results of their actions. If their feelings are infinitely good, then in the unconscious mind, the results must also be infinitely good.

As I have written before, this is a religious passion in the absence of religion, so it has no traditional means to structure and channel it. Just as religion partakes of symmetrical logic in an adaptive way (i.e., the meek shall inherit the earth, the Golden Rule, humans are made in the image of the Creator, etc.), leftists do so in a terribly unhealthy way. That is, because of the intensity of their feelings, these feelings reach way down into the symmetrical realm, with no way to structure or make sense of them. This is why you always see so much highly charged, "unfiltered" unconscious material coming out of the left. To borrow a metaphor from someone, reading dailykos or huffington post is like taking a ride through a sewer in a glass bottom boat.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Somebody’s been taking calcium supplements

I have to admit, I certainly didn’t expect the leftists at Columbia to take Ahmadinejad to task over his actions. Having read the full article, it seems that half the audience was on the side of Lee Bollinger while the other half seemed quite OK with Ahmadinejad. I’m sure all the heat from the public must have pushed and cajoled them into giving the fellow half the grilling he deserved.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger opened the program with a blistering introduction in which he lambasted Ahmadinejad for calling for the annihilation of Israel, denying the Holocaust and supporting the execution of children, and told the leader of Iran that he resembled “a petty and cruel dictator.” Bollinger levied repeated criticisms against Ahmadinejad, calling on him to answer a series of challenges about his leadership, blasting his views about the “myth” of the Holocaust as being “absurd,” and saying that he doubted he “will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions.” “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated,” Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader’s Holocaust denial. “Will you cease this outrage?”

Continue reading this..

Stunning leftist arrogance

CONFIDENT Labor MPs have begun carving up the spoils of office, even before John Howard has fired the election starter’s gun. Supporters of Kevin Rudd are being talked up for two of the Parliament’s most prestigious and highly paid jobs - Speaker of the House of Representatives and Senate President. Roger Price, a right-wing backer of Mr Rudd from western Sydney, has emerged as a potential Speaker of the House of Representatives. And Gavin Marshall - a left-wing senator from Victoria - is being promoted by others to become President of the Senate. The two Labor figures stand to earn salaries of $170,000-plus - and the status of holding two of the most influential jobs in Parliament. News.com.

Take note voters, you haven’t even gotten wind of the election and they’re already rubbing their paws together. Yes, they’ve just assumed that you can be pushed and cajoled into voting for them, they’re obviously of the impression that you lot will just fall into line or else. Good grief, if this is how they behave before the election has even been called, imagine the utter contempt they’ll be treating you with IF they win.

Explaining Liberal Thinking In A Single Column

By John Hawkins (Excerpt:)

Liberals love to think of themselves as intellectual and nuanced, but liberalism is incredibly simplistic. It's nothing more than "childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues." Very seldom does any issue that doesn't involve pandering to their supporters boil down at its core level to more than feeling "nice" or "mean" to liberals. This makes liberals ill equipped to deal with complex issues. Since liberals tend to support or oppose policies based on how those policies make them feel about themselves, they do very little intellectual examination of whether the policies they advocate work or not. That's because it doesn't matter to them whether the policy is effective or not; it matters whether advocating the policy makes them feel "good" or "bad," "compassionate" or "stingy," "nice" or "mean."

Because of this, liberalism has more in common with religion than it does with other political ideologies like conservatism or libertarianism. Moreover, liberal beliefs are more like religious doctrine than any sort of battle-tested policies that bear up under logic or examination. Although the interpretation of the doctrine that the Left supports may change a bit over time, just as religious doctrine does, it's essentially taken on faith, like scripture. That's why, for example, you may see ferocious debates on the right side of the blogosphere about the war, illegal immigration, or spending. But, with the netroots, the debates almost always revolve around the best strategy to get more liberals elected. The issues are not really up for debate, other than debate over how to get them enacted.

This same thinking leads to very little criticism of liberals by other liberals. Liberals will ferociously defend and even happily echo the lies of other liberals. Liberal feminists will defend Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy. Liberals who pride themselves on being tolerant of other races will support Robert Byrd. Why? Because even if they're wrong, they're still fellow liberals -- which must mean they're nice people. What this leads to is an attitude that can be summed up like so: "The only things that a liberal can do wrong is to be insufficiently liberal, to question an important plank of the liberal agenda, or to do something politically that aids conservatives." ...

* Why are so many liberals hostile to religion? Because religion sets rules and tells people that if they break those rules, they're sinning! That keeps people from doing things that make them feel good and telling people that they're sinning makes them feel bad.

* Why are so many liberals hostile to the troops? Because the troops tend to be conservative (evil) and because they're out killing people and breaking things (which would make most liberals feel like bad people).

* Why are so many liberals unpatriotic? It makes liberals feel morally superior to rant about what's wrong with their own country. Plus, as an added bonus, people from other nations agree with them and that makes them feel good as well....

* Why are liberals so hostile to successful people who don't happen to be celebrities, trial lawyers, or big donors to the Democratic Party? Again, this is another great opportunity for them to feel morally superior. They can feel like good people because they want to give money to the poor -- granted, not their money, but rich people's money. The rich have so much and the poor have so little, so why shouldn't liberals take it from them and then pat themselves on the back for their compassion?

Once you understand the basics of how liberals think, you can understand everything that they do. Granted, there will be a few exceptions, but if the vast herd of liberals is doing something that doesn't seem to fit the template, it's either because there's money or sex involved, they're doing what they have to do to win politically, they're taking that position because they refuse to be on the same side as conservatives, or there's something going on you don't know about and it's not really an exception.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

France cracking down on illegals

As France races to deport 25,000 illegal aliens by the end of the year — a quota set by President Nicolas Sarkozy — tensions are mounting and the crackdown is taking a toll. Critics say the hunt threatens values in a nation that prides itself on being a cradle of human rights and a land of asylum. Protesters have gathered by the dozens in Paris to protect illegal aliens as police move in.

But with three months left in the year, police have caught at least 11,800 illegal aliens, less than half the target, so Mr. Sarkozy has ordered officials to pick up the pace. There are no solid estimates of the number of illegal aliens in France. The Immigration Ministry puts it at 200,000 to 400,000, many from former French colonies in Africa. France has a population of about 63 million. The president, who cultivated a tough-on-crime image while serving as interior minister, says France needs a new kind of immigrant — one who is "selected, not endured." Washington Times.

If this had been America doing this, the leftists would have been tearing their clothes off (OK bad example) and their hair out, heck some of them would be committing mass suicide in protest. The UN would be screaming and and condemning America more than usual, though Israel might welcome these developments. We would probably have world wide protests and the internet might even coming crashing down due to all the online petitions being started.

We'd be treated to hours and hours of that Geraldo fellow in the states bawling hysterically and completely inconsolable on Oprah's couch, while rabid leftists hurl red paint and other hygienically questionable items at wherever Michelle Malkin or Bill O'Reilly may or may not be. They may even require double the number of security personnel (Conservative men and women) to protect them from always peaceful, but 'emotional' liberals.

The weasel has landed!!

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a low-key entrance into New York City on Sunday evening amid extremely tight security as he faces a firestorm of controversy surrounding his visit to address the U.N. General Assembly and speak to students and teachers during a forum at Columbia University. Ahmadinejad said the American people have been denied “correct information,” and his visit will give them a chance to hear a different voice, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust “a myth,” encouraged the destruction of Israel and supported terrorists in Iraq, will address the United Nations General Assembly and a Columbia University forum but will not be allowed to tour Ground Zero. Some students and activist groups blasted Columbia University’s decision to allow Ahmadinejad on campus, but the Ivy League school plans to stick to the schedule.

Off course they’ll stick to it, any anti-American, anti-Semitic parasite will always be welcome in any left-wing institution and I’m sure there will be lots of fawning leftists waiting there to hear him speak as well.

Other efforts to condemn Ahmadinejad’s visit include a full-page ad set to run Monday in The New York Times by Freedom’s Watch. The ad calls him a “terrorist” and blasts Columbia’s decision to allow him to speak. “People who support killing Americans are welcome. But the military that defends them is not,” says the new ad by Freedom’s Watch. FOXNews.

Off course they are supportive of those who kill American soldiers, why wouldn’t they be, leftists at their core are ungrateful, sniveling curs; biting the hands that feed and protect is what they do best.

When I first published this post at my blog, I didn’t know anything about this Columbia University, well here is some more information on this hypocritical nest of leftist vipers.

Columbia University said it would welcome any notable figure visiting the United States — even Adolf Hitler himself — to speak to students and faculty at the Ivy League college. On Monday, Columbia will play host to Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust “a myth,” encouraged the destruction of Israel and who leads a nation that has supported Hezbollah terrorists in the Middle East and insurgents in Iraq.

The Iranian president will address students and faculty at a forum only days after Columbia retracted a speaking invitation to the president of the Minuteman Project, a controversial citizens’ group that seeks to secure America’s borders from illegal immigrants, even going so far as to try building a fence along the border with Mexico. FOXNews.

Free speech alright, just the speech that they’re happy with. As I said, any anti-American, Jew-hating tyrant is welcome, nice principles and company you like to keep there lefties.

MORE ON THE "MAMMOTH DUNG" FANTASY

Previous comment here. Popular summary of recent research followed by journal abstract below:

Permafrost melting not a problem

"A re-examination of projected melting of Arctic permafrost from global warming indicates that massive releases of methane from permafrost degradation are unlikely in this century. During the 20th century, humans' increasing greenhouse gas emissions have made Arctic regions warmer, causing permafrost to melt. Model projections indicate that, as the climate warms, permafrost will continue melting and methane bound in frozen sediments could escape to the atmosphere. Because methane is also a greenhouse gas, this would exacerbate global warming. One permafrost model, presented in late 2005, indicated that near-surface Arctic permafrost will completely degrade during the 21st century.

Now, Delisle has critically reviewed this model, finding it to lack necessary initial parameters. He offers an alternative model designed to have a more complete mathematical formulation of the physical processes in permafrost. It projects that surface permafrost will persist in areas north of 70§N latitude. Permafrost will also endure at depth between 60§N and 70§N. Delisle notes that ice-core analyses previously made by other scientists indicate minimal release of methane during warm periods in the last 9,000 years. Based on the new model and the ice-core findings, he concludes that scenarios calling for massive releases of methane in the near future from degrading permafrost are questionable."

Source

Journal abstract:

Near-surface permafrost degradation: How severe during the 21st century?

By G. Delisle

A previously presented model on nearly complete near-surface permafrost degradation in the Arctic during the 21st century is critically reviewed. An alternative model with a more complete mathematical formulation of the physical processes acting in permafrost terrain is presented, which suggests that permafrost will mostly prevail in this century in areas north of 70øN. Furthermore, permafrost will survive at depth in most areas between 60ø to 70øN. Based on paleoclimatic data and in consequence of this study, it is suggested that scenarios calling for massive release of methane in the near future from degrading permafrost are questionable.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

SOME QUEER HAPPENINGS

Letter not Illegal but Police Investigating Anyhow!

We read:

"Dear Sodomite," the letter began. It arrived in the mail on 9-11. It was mailed in Lansing on 9-10. The letter went on to tell me I had been found "GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!!!" (capital letters in the original). After introducing me to scripture I have read and heard numerous times from right wing zealots and white supremacy leaders, the letter closes as follows:

"REPENT IN THE NAME OF JESUS FROM YOUR FILTHY LIFESTYLE OF SATAN, OR IN THE ETERNAL LAKE OF FIRE YOU WILL EXPERIENCE AGONIES THAT MAKE AUSCHWITZ SEEM LIKE PARADISE!" ....

And while nothing in the letter was illegal per se, we do after all live in a country where free speech is a sacred tradition, and religious speech even more so, the act itself is one of terrorism. I have contacted law enforcement and there is now an investigation.

Source

Special law for homosexuals again.





Louisiana State U: ANY questioning of homosexuality is "hate speech"

There is a perfectly civil article here offering a scientific argument against the "gay gene" theory and complaining about the impossibility of saying what you think about homosexuality because of an oppressive university speech code.

We read here that the letter has been widely condemned as "hate speech" and we read here that someone who claims to believe in free speech still thinks the letter should not have been published.

Why is a sexual perversion so sacred? Presumably because most normal people have an instinctive revulsion against it and upsetting normal people is what it is all about.

Other sexual perversions -- such as pedophilia -- are not sacred even though both do harm. The way AIDS (which is overwhelmingly a disease of homosexuals) shortens the life of homosexuals is beyond question. I myself had two homosexual friends who succumbed to it at an early age.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Labour's masters: Corruption Inc.

"A TRANSPORT Workers Union (TWU) training fund will be scrutinised by an independent auditor amid allegations the union sold out its workers for millions of dollars in secret kickbacks.

TWU rank-on-file members were furious that one of the union's deals with a labour hire firm led to pay cuts of about 30 per cent, Channel 9 reported.

Members also said a separate, unregistered contract had allowed the company to make substantial payments into the union's Training, Education and Industrial Rights fund. "

They come, like shadows in the darkest of nights

Leaving fire, terror, death and pestilence in their wake; ok maybe not pestilence, but you get what I mean.
Soldiers from an elite Israeli unit captured nuclear material originating in North Korea from a secret Syrian military installation before IAF jets bombed it, a report by Britain's Sunday Times wrote Saturday night, quoting "informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem." According to the sources quoted by the report, the alleged IAF attack was sanctioned by the US on September 6, after the Americans were given proof that the material was indeed nuclear related.
The sources confirmed that the materials were tested after they were taken from Syria and were found to be of North Korean origin, which raised concerns that Syria may have been trying to come into possession of nuclear arms. The report said that the commandos, from the legendary General Staff's Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal), may have been disguised in Syrian army uniforms. It also stated that Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who used to head the unit, personally oversaw the operation. JPost.
By the way Syria, that attack happened, like last week... don't you think it's a bit late to get all worked up over it & scrambling jets now...
IAF fighter jets were alerted to the northern border with Syria on Saturday after a Syrian military jet, being tracked by Israel, disappeared from military radar systems. A short time later, the IAF discovered that the Syrian jet had crashed in Syrian territory. The IAF jets returned to their bases and the level of alert was lowered. JPost.
Maybe it was best the response was a week or two late, at least then you can say it was Allah's will when your jet came crashing down, looks much better than saying your fancy jet was brought down by a bunch of apes and pigs, right?

Tolerant, rational leftist losers

The Colorado State University student newspaper is under fire after publishing a two-word editorial statement about President Bush. The Rocky Mountain Collegian published the editorial on its Sept. 21 opinion page, saying “Taser this .. (expletive) BUSH.” University officials released a statement explaining their concern for response to the editorial, and that it has no control over its student media. “While we understand (the editorial) is upsetting and offensive to many people, CSU is prohibited by law from censoring or regulating the content of its student media publications,” CSU said in a written statement. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief wrote a letter to readers to explain that “our intentions were not malicious.” FOXNews.

That’s code for we, the university officials, forgot our plastic spines at home today, besides it’s George Bush, so who cares really. Can we expect the same charming language from this loser student newspaper about a Democrat or a Muslim perhaps, bet you they (the university officials) will find their spines very quickly, that is if the students had the balls to do such a thing in the first place. In my experience, these cowards only attack Conservatives and Christians because we won’t turn nasty and violent like them. These losers know they are beneath us, why else would they be sniping at our ankles in such a childish and immature fashion.

Update - Here is the link for the offensive headline in the Student Newspaper.

Both Leftism and Islamism are outlets for rage

Excerpt:

Young people who are enraged tend to be drawn into delinquency, drug and alcohol use, and criminality, all as ways to manage and discharge their intolerable internal states. Imagine how awful it is to feel that everyone has disappointed and failed you; imagine the rage of children who feel betrayed and let down over and over again. Such young people are also drawn to ideologies which explicitly support their need to externalize:

I am enraged; it is intolerable to know that my rage stems from my own failures and the failures of those people who have formed the nidus of my internal object world [usually parents]; my failures must be caused by someone else and their behavior [Jews, Americans] justifies this rage I cannot get rid of; now I have a place to discharge and rid myself of this rage.

In reality, since the primary source of the rage is internal, such discharge only works temporarily, necessitating new situations in which to justify and discharge the renewed built-up rage.

Both Marxism and Islamism, with their emphasis on Utopian goals which promise to end disappointment and deprivation while directing condoned rage against the external world of oppressors, share this structure. They facilitate defensive externalization, allow for the free expression of primitive rage, and promise a Utopian consummation, either in an earthly paradise where all desires, material and sexual, can be achieved, or in the heavenly Paradise where the 72 virgins await. This is the attraction of Islam and Marxism to so many disaffected young people.

In college, I dabbled in radical politics. I went to many anti-war demonstrations as a teenager. I enjoyed the frisson of rebellion that the Psychedelic 60s was shrouded within, yet a single incident awoke me to the reality that I would never be a good Marxist. I had been intrigued by Trotsky, the idea of constant revolution was fascinating to someone who wished to resist falling into the predicted and predictable path I feared I was on. On campus was a well established group of young Trotskyites, the Young Socialist Alliance. They were involved in various protests, which were always enjoyable, not least for the presence of many nubile, young radical women who approved of radical young men. One fateful day I stopped by the YSA table to find out more about them. I made a joking reference to the previous weekend's demonstration and discovered that the leader of the group was a young man who was incredibly humorless. He proceeded to lecture me (hectored me, perhaps) with a diatribe on how much commitment was necessary for the revolution to succeed and how there was no room for humor in the revolution; this was deadly serious business fighting the oppressors and jokes had no place in it.

I thought he was a complete jerk; I also thought he was a very dangerous jerk. This was the kind of person who would have no trouble condemning someone for thought crimes. If that was the kind of person who was attracted to Marxism, perhaps I wasn't as much of a radical as I fancied.

Years later I can still recall him, with a Che Guevara beard, intense eyes, and a complete lack of humor or humanity. Any revolution that condemned humor was not a revolution for me.

Rage at a cruel and withholding universe (often a derivative of infantile frustration) is difficult to tolerate. Most of us, with good-enough parenting, come to temper our infantile frustrations (which have roots in our infantile grandiosity which is so painful to give up) by using our loving ties to our parents to metabolize the rage which would otherwise be so destructive. Those unfortunates who cannot do so via love are left enraged and searching for ways to offload the rage to an external victim. Ideologies that enable such offloading attract the angry and the failed and it is through this pathway that Marx (the angry, anti-Semitic hater of religion) and the Islamists (descended from Qutb, the angry, anti-Semitic hater of secularism) find their true identity.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)