GREAT ECONOMIC NEWS

Friday's job report shows that White House economist Greg Mankiw was very nearly right when he projected almost a year ago that jobs could rise by 2.6 million in 2004. Of course, he was widely ridiculed inside Washington after making this statement, and at one point even the White House turned its back on the Harvard professor's estimate. But the Labor Department's latest employment release shows the yearly gain for nonfarm payrolls coming in at 2.3 million. That's close enough for government work. It's also the best jobs performance in five years.

Why so good? The labor market responded powerfully to lower personal tax rates. As workers were able to keep more of what they earned, the unemployment rate declined from 6.3 percent to 5.4 percent. A full 2.5 million jobs were added since August 2003. Mainstream economists continue to scoff at the economic power of lower marginal tax rates. But once again a supply-side experiment worked. For all of 2004, nonfarm job additions averaged just under 200,000 per month. At this rate, 2005 will be another banner year for employment and economic growth.

... it is possible that this year's unemployment rate could dip below 5 percent. Outside of the bubble economy of the late 1990s, this would mark the lowest unemployment rate since 1973. Declining unemployment also signifies lower federal spending on unemployment benefits and other small-scale entitlement payouts.

Additionally, at 5 percent or lower unemployment, the 4 percent growth rate of the economy will spur a flood of new individual tax collections at lower tax rates. Hence, another economic surprise of 2005 will be a pronounced decline in the federal budget deficit.... America's cowboy capitalism, to borrow Europe's derisive term, is hatching yet another economic boom.

More here

I guess this shows the effects of all that "outsourcing": "U.S. industrial output grew strongly last month while producer prices fell at the sharpest rate in 1-1/2 years amid tumbling energy prices, according to reports suggesting healthy, noninflationary growth".

Australia is doing well, too:

"Australia's remarkable run of economic growth is set to continue, with new hirings in December cutting unemployment to 5.1per cent, its lowest point in 28 years... Noting that interest rates are just above 5per cent, while inflation is just over 2per cent, Commsec chief economist Craig James said: "Without question, Australians are enjoying the best economic conditions since the late 1960s." Mr James said that with the 29,000 new jobs added last month, a record 60.1per cent of the population aged over 15 has a job. The fall in unemployment last month was felt around the country".

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ELSEWHERE

Muslim pride trumps aid to Muslim victims: "Indonesia announced Wednesday that all foreign troops assisting in the relief operation must leave by late March.... A number of countries have sent or are sending troops to help. The United States military has taken a major role, flying daily helicopter runs to ferry food to isolated villages devastated by the wave and bringing wounded people to hospitals here in the provincial capital. The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and two other Navy vessels have been cruising off the coast here to provide support. American soldiers delivering the aid return to their ships at night. Some of the large contingents of foreign troops, particularly from neighboring Singapore, have brought heavy equipment - bulldozers and backhoes - to clear smashed buildings and the debris here and in Meulaboh, a city on Sumatra's west coast that was severely damaged. Australian troops, which were the first to arrive, are to be complemented by a naval ship due on Thursday".

Just by the way, I wonder where the French and German contingents were in Indonesia? I guess I'm not the first one to wonder that. It must be their moral superiority that kept them at home.

French corruption again: "French state-owned television is using what some call intimidation and threatened libel lawsuits to quiet calls for an investigation of TV images that showed the alleged shooting of a Palestinian boy by Israeli soldiers in 2000. The video from the TV channel France 2 has become famous around the world as a symbol for the current Palestinian intifada (uprising) and shows a boy trying to take shelter behind a man during a gun battle in September 2000 between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. Independent media analysts in France and Israel have provided what they call conclusive evidence that the video of the incident was staged"

Even a Frenchman says that the French got on well with the Nazis. In their typically gutless way, they did: "M Le Pen, 76, leader of the National Front party, had attracted a chorus of indignation from the political world and media on Wednesday with a magazine interview in which he said that the 1940-44 occupation was "not especially inhumane", and that the Gestapo largely worked to protect the French population. The massacres of the French population during the war consisted of a few "blunders" by the occupiers, he told Rivarol, an extreme right-wing magazine.... M Le Pen said that he stood by his words. "I note that if one compares the German occupation of France with the occupation in certain other European countries, then proportionately it is in France where it was the least painful."

Two fingers to feminism: "President Bush's policy on women in ground combat takes just four words to articulate: 'No women in combat.'

Real electoral fraud. You need more votes? We'll find 'em! "Christine Gregoire yesterday pushed back tears and dark clouds over a still-contested election, raised her right hand and took the oath of office as Washington's governor. ..."

Blithering Bunny has a huge fisking of an article published in the MSM about how the Communists of the Western world were just idealists and that is why it is OK to be an ex-Commo.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx regarded non-Germans as "rabble". Yes. That was old Karl, not Adolf. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 10:30 ("I and the Father are one").

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 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.

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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EDUCATION: WHAT IS POSSIBLE

I mentioned yesterday the excellent article by Jonathan Rose which showed how inspiring to ordinary working class people the "dead white males" (so hated by the Left) can be. Rose showed how working class people would once seek them out and read them simply for pleasure and personal enlightenment. We also know how thoroughly the Left have succeeded in removing such authors from present-day high school and college curricula and how the politically correct replacement texts are simply boring to the students. Rose suggests, and I agree, that a restoration of "the greats" to modern curricula would do much to improve educational standards, if only because of the greater enthusiasm they would generate among the students.

In that connection, let me list just some of the authors who were included in my own 6TH GRADE reading book of 50 years ago: Longfellow, Masefield, Dickens, Cervantes, Henry Lawson (a revered Australian poet), Wordsworth, Goldsmith, Whittier, Cowper, Reade, Tolstoy, Scott, Byron and Turgenev. Sadly, that list will probably be meaningless to most of my younger readers unless they are real "culture vultures" but the authors included are some of the greatest prose and poetry authors of all time. If an introduction to "The Greats" on that scale can be accomplished in just one year of primary school, it is perfectly evident that across an entire primary and secondary school curriculum we could offer a fairly complete coverage of the great minds of the past. It is not "too difficult".

Given the proven capacity to inspire of the great authors, a return to them would not only be worthwhile in it own right but should also enthuse the students far more than the boring propaganda they have now and thus lead them on to generally higher levels of educational and intellectual attainment. As some students graduate from modern-day American High Schools barely able to read and write, the scope for improvement in levels of educational and intellectual attainment would seem almost limitless.

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! If there ever was any doubt that Americans are the kindest and most generous people the world has ever seen, read about Herbert Hoover. Just about totally forgotten but he seems to have been the biggest saviour of European lives ever -- and by far. He ought to be the No. 1 hero of the 20th century. It's really infuriating the way important basics about history are not taught these days. The Leftist a**holes who staff the teaching profession only want to tell you whatever bad things they can dredge up about America.

Another Wow! Who said this? Ronald Reagan? "The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone." It could have been said yesterday but it was in fact said by Thomas Jefferson. Looks like American judges have always been people who think they know better than the law they are paid to administer.

A third Wow! Taranto really skewers the NYT today. The NYT says that America has a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba and draws the usual anti-American inferences from that. Taranto notes what underlies the statistics: America makes huge efforts to save premature bablies but, inevitably, many of them die anyway. So they are infant deaths. No comparable effort is made in Cuba so the same baby there would be counted as stillborn and thus not be counted in the infant mortality statistics. So the higher infant mortality in the USA is a sign of a much BETTER medical system. Surprise, surprise!

I normally agree with Jeff Jacoby but he is off with the fairies today. He says America hasn't got enough politicians because Congress is small relative to America's population size. Hasn't he heard of all those State government politicians? Count them in and America has got HEAPS of politicians per head. It must have been a slow week for Jeff this time.

A good quote from Diplomad: "Sitting VERY late for two consecutive nights in interminable meetings with UN reps, hearing them go on about "taking the lead coordination role," pledges, and the impending arrival of this or that UN big shot or assessment/coordination team, for the millionth time I realized that if not for Australia and America almost nobody in the tsunami-affected areas would have survived more than a few days. If we had waited for the UNocrats to get their act coordinated, the already massive death toll would have become astronomical. But, fortunately, thanks to "retrograde racist war-mongers " such as John Howard and George W. Bush, as we sat in air conditioned meeting rooms with these UNocrats, young Australians and Americans were at that moment "coordinating" without the UN and saving the lives of tens-of-thousands of people". (Via Indepundit)

It was "unilateralism" that saved lives in Asia: "The world is in a 'race against time' to prevent a sharp rise in the number of deaths resulting from the devastating Dec. 26 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said at a Jan. 6 summit of world leaders in Jakarta, Indonesia. Yes, Jan. 6 -- 11 days after the tsunami first hit and after an estimated 150,000 people had died... It also was more than a week after the U.S. and other countries had people on the ground helping the victims."

There is an encouraging article here showing that family values are reasserting themselves among younger Americans -- despite all the attacks from feminists and the Left generally.

There is a thorough debunking here of the pre-election Leftist claim that GWB had a "deal" with the Saudis to keep gasoline prices low in the run-up to the election. The graphs show that prices were in fact unusually HIGH just before the election. Some deal! Another dreamed-up Leftist lie.

I have just put up here an impassioned article by Nathan Tabor about abortion. I don't wholly agree with it but it makes some interesting points.

I have just put up here a list of Left/Right differences as seen by a bipartisan observer.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels hated small farmers so much that he was prepared to go to war against them. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 14:6-13 ("I am in the Father, and the Father in me").

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 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.

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE EDUCATION CRIME

Jonathan Rose has an amazingly extensive and detailed article which shows beyond much doubt that British working class people were much better educated 100 years ago than they are now. He also shows what an enlightening and transformative experience it was for the working people of yesteryear to read some of the famous "dead white males" for the first time. Just a tiny excerpt:

"Oral-history interviews reveal that, among British working people born between 1870 and 1908, two-thirds had unambiguously positive memories of school. And that fact inevitably raises a disturbing question: whether children today in America's inner cities would give their schools such high marks-and if not, why not? Even more impressive is a 1940 survey of reading among pupils at nonacademic high schools, where education terminated at age 14. This sample represented something less than the working-class norm: the best students had already been skimmed off and sent to academic secondary schools on scholarship. Those who remained behind were asked which books they had read over the past month, excluding required texts. Even in this below-average group, 62 percent of boys and 84 percent of girls had read some poetry: their favorites included Kipling, Longfellow, Masefield, Blake, Browning, Tennyson, and Wordsworth".

And I KNOW from personal experience how exactly right is what Rose describes. I myself was born in a small Australian country town to working class parents who read only popular novels. But there was a "School of Arts" (non-government co-operative) library in town and a secondhand bookshop. And courtesy of those I read just about all the famous literature of ancient Greece before I was 18. And I experienced exactly the excitement from my discoveries there -- I still vividly remember the enormous impression that Homer and Plato's Socratic dialogues made on me -- that Rose repeatedly documents among his British working class readers of yesteryear. For me as for them it was an immense intellectual liberation. Most of that literature was once taught in the schools. Now virtually none of it is. My son has just finished High School and until I mentioned them he had never even heard of Wordsworth or Coleridge! What a crime against ordinary people the Leftist purveyors of educational mush who infest the schools today have committed! They have replaced the glorious "dead white males" with mediocrities who inspire no-one and induce boredom instead of excitement. They have stolen from our young people their incomparable heritage.

Needless to say, the Rose article is one of the few for which I say: "Read the whole thing". (Link to Rose via Blithering Bunny)

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ELSEWHERE

The dishonesty of Leftists is truly bottomless. Taranto notes that far-Left CBS producer Mary Mapes, who has just been sacked for her use of forged documents, says that the only thing wrong with the documents was that they were photocopies. The fact that zillions of people have pointed out that the documents were clearly computer-produced when they were alleged to be typewriter-produced is just totally ignored by her in traditional Leftist fashion. Walter Duranty lives! No doubt some American university will now give her a job teaching journalistic ethics. They do that sort of thing.

Glad to hear THAT!: "The Supreme Court refused to hear a case challenging a Florida state ban on gay couples adopting children. The Court let stand a lower court ruling that upheld Florida's right to have a blanket policy prohibiting gays from adopting children....".

LOL. What a loon: "David Livingstone says the idea behind the economic boycott he's organizing is simple: If people don't show up at work or buy things, companies lose money. As he sees it, that's money the Bush administration can't tax, and can't use to run the war in Iraq, protect polluters or chip away at the Constitution. So the Detroit Democrat and a handful of other anti-Bush groups across the country are urging others of like mind to withhold their cash and labor on Inauguration Day -- from all businesses. They don't think they'll inflict a huge economic pain, but they do want to make a point."

LOL: British cuisine!: "The poll found the British were awfully patriotic: Britain was ranked among the top five nations on all 12 criteria. It was even ranked as having the world's fourth-best cuisine, behind China, India and Italy, but ahead of France. In British eyes, their country is the most democratic in the world, the best place to live and the country most deserving of international respect". [I would have said that British cuisine is the world's worst -- except for the desserts, of course. Great desserts!]

An article here points out that the principle preached by affirmative action advocates -- that people should not be represented in favoured niches of society above their proportion in the overall population -- is exactly the same rationale Hitler used to discriminate against the Jews. As they are in America today, Jews WERE over-represented in many favoured niches of German society in Hitler's day. So Hitler's desire to cut the Jews down to size was essentially the same desire as that which is seen in today's Leftists who want to cut white middle-class males down to size. Excerpt: "Thus, the victims may be different, the perpetrators may be different, but the spirit that energized Nazi race laws is clearly evident in today's America. That spirit is summarized in the view that justice requires all groups achieve and received a proportional share of wealth and power. Those groups who overachieve are seen in this theory as oppressors who must be curbed, if not eliminated. This view of justice is what links proponents of Affirmative Action to the Nazis. Thus, one may properly conclude that American liberals have created and enforced the Nazi-like race edicts that pervade America."

Interesting: "Children who are exposed to two or more cats or dogs in the first year of life have lower responses to a whole host of allergic substances when the kids are aged six or seven. This comes from an allergy study that followed hundreds of children, right from the time when their mothers were pregnant with them.

Friendly Grizzly has a good post (scroll down a bit) on why housing costs so much in California. The Greenies and the socialists between them have really shafted the little guy.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again for the best variety of reading on the net.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx hated the Jews for being conservative! Looks like many of them have been dodging that risk ever since. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at some more trinitarian defences based on John 1:1.

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 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.

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE LEFTIST IDEAL IN ACTION

Sweden:

The extent of the failure of the Swedish model are both shocking and little known. For example, no new net jobs have been produced in the Swedish private sector since 1950. (By contrast, the U.S. created more than 60 million new private-sector jobs during the same period, from 52 million in 1950 to about 115 million in 2002.) "None of top 50 companies on the Stockholm stock exchange has been started since 1970."

Again, contrast this with the U.S. where many of our biggest companies had not been born or known of in 1970, such as Microsoft, Intel, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Cisco, etc., Mr. Karlson's litany of failures of the Swedish model include: "Sweden has dropped from fourth to 14th place in 2002 among the OECD countries (i.e., affluent industrialized countries) in terms of GDP per capita since 1970."

In addition, "well over 1 million people out of a work force of around four million did not work in 2003 but lived on various kinds of public welfare programs

More (much more) here

Eurozone:

Signs of shaky economies in France and Germany have sharpened worries about Europe's less-than-robust recovery - and underscored the struggle to shake up regulation-clogged economies in countries that use the euro.....

Private economists, however, point to shadows cast by Germany's rise in unemployment in December to 10.8 percent, and French government statistics showing zero economic growth in the third quarter. Unemployment there remains at 9.9 percent.

Economists expect fourth-quarter growth of 3.5 percent to over 4 percent in the United States, where unemployment was only 5.4 percent in December. Per-person U.S. gross domestic product of around $44,610 (34,100 euros) remains ahead of $30,746 (23,500 euros) for people in the 12 countries using the euro

More here

But there is no room for U.S. complacency:

US policies are falling behind global competitors: "America is losing its status as one of the freest economies in the world. The punitive U.S. tax code, out-of-control spending levels, and onerous regulations are making America less competitive in the international economy. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, the U.S. is no longer one of the top ten freest economies for the first time since the index was started in 1994. The Index, published by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation, found that economic freedom is spreading world wide, with 86 nations receiving better scores. Unfortunately, America's score remained the same while Chile, Australia, and Iceland further opened their economies and surpassed the United States. Currently, the U.S. is tied with Switzerland for 12th place."

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ELSEWHERE

That famous U.S. airport security again. Email from a reader: "A colleague whose husband is a commercial pilot told me this one: A pilot who is certified to carry a gun went through airline security - showed his card, etc.. They let him keep his gun, but confiscated his nail-clippers. The security people said that some terrorist might take them away and use them as a weapon". Even if it's an urban myth, it's probably "fake but accurate".

Fabulous: "The nuclear-powered US submarine that ran aground in the Pacific last week, killing a sailor and injuring 23 others, ran into an undersea mountain that was not on the navy's charts, a US defence official said today.... A senior defence official, who asked not to be identified, said initial reports were that the submarine was cruising at high speed at a depth of about 120 metres on Monday when it ran into an uncharted sea mountain". [Contrast that with the sad fate of Russia's "Kursk". The comparison may not be exact but the U.S. boat survived a catastrophic front-end accident whereas the "pride" of the Soviet fleet did not. Higher safety standards?]

There is an article here showing how successful films and other light entertainment were in Hitler's Germany. Hollywood is Leftist too, of course. But Leftists have to be good at propaganda or they would not survive. Reality (like that described above in Europe) does not suit them at all. The article mentions Nazi themes as "law and order", "national respect", "homeland", "discipline and obedience" without mentioning that they were all Leftist themes in Hitler's time. You can find such themes in the American "Progressives" of 100 years ago and also, of course in Marx & Engels. And if Marx & Engels were not Leftists, I do not know who would be. It is only silly old conservatives who advocate things like liberty and respect for the individual. Leftists hate patriotism now but they were happy to use it in the past.

Green-eyed envy about the world's most popular cartoon -- which has just been dropped by by the "L.A. Times": "Gene Weingarten, a humor columnist for The Washington Post and Washington Post Writers Group, praised the Times decision during his weekly washingtonpost.com chat yesterday. He said the paper displayed "the kind of cojones missing in too many places" and described "Garfield" as "a strip produced by a committee, devoid of originality, devoid of guts, a strip cynically DESIGNED to be inoffensive and bad, on the theory that public tastes are insipid. Now we need others to follow suit. Like the Post." [No wonder people are always picking on McDonalds, Microsoft, Wal-Mart etc. Infantile hatred of other people's success is all too common. Should I hate Instapundit? I don't.].

Vin Suprynowicz has an interesting update on the almost certainly-true claim that the "AIDS-epidemic" in Africa has been vastly exaggerated. Hardly any African said to have AIDS is ever actually tested for it. But it suits the do-gooders to says that any sick African has AIDS. And somehow it's all our fault, of course -- from evil drug companies to the CIA.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx advocated terrorism. See what a thoroughly modern guy he was? My latest posting on "A scripture blog" shows why the apostle John was a "Gnostic".

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 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.

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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TUESDAY ROUNDUP

Once again I give links to what I think are the best posts for the week on my various blogs:

Dissecting Leftism has a defence of Wal-Mart

Political Correctness Watch notes that black homophobia is now being blamed on whites

Greenie Watch notes that the Greenies seem to have decided that DDT is OK after all

MarxWords notes that Engels claimed that Germany had a right to conquer other lands because it was more "civilized"

Scripture blog shows why John 1:3 undermines the Trinity doctrine

Gun Watch shows how GWB is helping gun owners

Socialized Medicine shows that drug companies do actually help the poor of the world

Leftists as Elitists looks at some of the disgusting ideas of Peter Singer

Education Watch says that even Europe offers more educational choice than the USA

On Majority Rights I question the idea that climate has much influence on what we are.

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THE U.N.

Inquiry's Senator Coleman speaks: "While many questions concerning oil-for-food remain unanswered, one conclusion has become abundantly clear: Kofi Annan should resign. The decision to call for his resignation does not come easily, but I have arrived at this conclusion because the most extensive fraud in the history of the UN occurred on his watch. Annan was at the helm of the UN for all but a few days of the oil-for-food program, and he must, therefore, be held accountable for the UN's utter failure to detect or stop Hussein's abuses. The consequences of the UN's ineptitude cannot be overstated: Hussein was empowered to withstand the sanctions regime, remain in power, and even rebuild his military."

Diplomad on the U.N. in Indonesia: "What else is the UN up to, you ask? Oh the usual that you would expect from an organization with a dozen or so well-funded agencies supposedly devoted to emergency humanitarian relief . . . no, no, not feed people or provide them medical care, what do you think the UN is, the US military or something? What is wrong with you readers? Has The Diplomad taught you nothing? The correct response is put out a press release in New York claiming to be doing all sorts of things that others, e.g., US and Australia, are doing"

It's time to evict the UN: "People such as John Kerry are always eager to get the U.N.'s good housekeeping seal of approval before America makes a foreign policy decision. Or at least Kerry and company do when there's a Republican in the White House. I don't seem to recall it's having been quite so imperative when Clinton and Lewinsky were holding down the Oval Office. Be that as it may, what nation in its right mind would surrender even a scintilla of its sovereignty to a group as loathsome as the member states of the U.N.?"

To hell with the U.N.: "I don't have any objection to the United Nations' technocratic functions. As a practical matter, if it makes sense to have a central clearinghouse to organize the building of water treatment plants in the Third World, OK, fine. Most of us agree that helping victims of natural disasters, inoculating children, feeding the starving and so forth are good things -- just as we all agree it's a good thing for our garbage to be collected. But it is a huge intellectual leap to go from saying garbage should be collected to saying that the government should collect it. Similarly, you need to demonstrate that the United Nations' noble efforts cannot be carried out by someone else."

Spear Shaker has some rather sarcastic comments about France and the U.N. More and more elaborate ways of doing nothing seems to be the French genius. "Spear Shaker" doesn't seem to be a bad sort of guy for a Californian: He reads Australian newspapers and regularly ridicules both global warming and Jacques Chirac. An excellent start!

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ELSEWHERE

Orcinus strikes back. Dear me! The shallowness of Leftist thinking does give me lots of laughs at times. A little while ago, I did a demolition job on the naive pontifications of a Leftist tyro named Orcinus. It was such a good squash of poor old Orcinus that Instapundit linked to it and made the comment about me that you see towards the top of the Green column to the left of this page. Orcinus has apparently been seething about that ever since. I commented two days ago that Leftist ideologue Steve Kangas was "brain-dead". Orcinus posted yesterday what he seems to think is a "Gotcha" about that -- noting that Kangas in fact died a few years ago -- the whole of him, not just his brain! (I noted that fact yesterday myself). So Orcinus makes the highly original claim that I should have googled Kangas to check out whether he was alive or not before I criticized him! I at first thought that was a pretty hilarious requirement for Orcinus to have come up with all by his little self but on second thoughts I rather like it. Hey guys! Get the word out: If anybody is sprouting Leftist fruitcakery, he is probably DEAD! Let me say again, however, that I am sorry to hear of the sad way Kangas died.

More fun! Ron Bailey has a sarcastic article about a recent conference of political psychologists which paraded claims that Right-wing people are "authoritarian" and hence mentally diseased. Their basis for the claim was an old one, however: The work of Robert Altemeyer, who has produced a questionnaire (the "RWA scale") that supposedly measures this dreadful right-wing disease of "authoritarianism". But, guess what? Altemeyer himself reports (p. 239 of his 1988 book "Enemies of Freedom") that Leftists are just as likely as Rightists to get high scores on his scale! So what makes his RWA scale a measure of ANYTHING Rightist is a profound mystery. How can it be Rightist if Leftists score high on it? So even if what he studies is pathological, it is not particularly Right-wing! But Leftists never let evidence bother them, of course. There are heaps of cases of Leftist "scientists" ignoring their own evidence, in fact -- e.g. here. Bailey also refers to some even more antique claims of Rightist psychopathology that I have debunked many times. See here

Norberg comments on Swedish television: "When the TV4 reporter in Thailand criticised bad relief efforts, he complained that the rescue teams went up and down the streets, shouting out information and instructions - in Thai. "Of course that doesn't help Swedes", he complained. What? They speak Thai in Thailand? The arrogance! The insolence!"

Ralph Peters: "The Saudi Arabian government and individual Saudis have spent billions of dollars spreading Wahhabi extremism and fostering hatred. No expense is spared to vilify Israel or the West. But when it comes to easing the misery of their fellow Muslims, the world-champ hypocrites in Riyadh just ain't interested. As of last week, the Saudis had pledged a pitiful $20 million to the tsunami-relief effort. That's a Saudi prince's bar-and-bordello budget for a weekend in Paris. Even the devout Muslims of Indonesia's devastated Aceh province don't qualify for Saudi charity. The images of peerless suffering aren't enough to open any Arab wallets, for that matter".

There are some MOST disturbing cases of American injustice reported here. And at least some are from from impeccably conservative sources like Phyllis Schlafly and Cato. It makes me glad I live in Australia. I don't agree with most of the opinions expressed in the article but the facts it reports would worry anyone. And Jeff Jacoby's post on American adoption laws is very troubling too.

My latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels advocated co-operation with other Leftists to achieve State control of industry, communications and education as steps towards Communism. My latest posting on "A scripture blog" looks at John 8:58.

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 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.

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME ECONOMICS

That evil capitalism! "It should come as heartening news that 2004 was one of the most prosperous years in history. Not because the U.S. economy grew by a solid 4.3 percent, but because developing countries experienced an explosive 6.1 percent economic growth. According to a recent study by the World Bank, 2004's growth reflected "an expansion without precedent over the past 30 years." Equally encouraging, the report notes that "the rapid growth of developing economies ... has produced a spectacular, if not historic, fall in poverty." Amazingly, the World Bank report did not get much coverage in our mainstream media. It seems the press was more interested in covering the evils of globalization than in taking notice of how world trade -- which grew by an astounding 10.2 percent this year -- is driving economic growth.... In fact, the recent success of developing countries at fighting poverty could be an Economics 101 lesson for today's American classroom. In East Asia and the Pacific region alone, the number of poor dropped from 472 million in 1990 to 271 million in 2001. By 2015, that number should shrink to 19 million, according to the World Bank.

"Buy American" hurts Americans: "President Bush has a plan to address the so-called trade deficit, which worries people so much. According to the wire services, Bush said, 'People can buy more United States products if they're worried about the trade deficit.' That will appeal to many Americans in a nationalistic fever. What could make them feel better than passing up inexpensive, high-quality, foreign-made products and buying pricier, American-made counterparts? But it won't help the economy or the American people in general. Frankly, I can't tell whether President Bush is kidding or not."

Big shrimp: A protectionist mess: "Critics often accuse free trade proponents of carrying water for big business. But maybe unrestricted trade isn't always in the best interest of all business. Manufacturers who use steel (car and appliance makers, for example) oppose tariffs on imported steel. However, steel producers of course support them, as they keep competitive foreign steel off the market. While the car maker might opposed steel tariffs, they might support tariffs on foreign-made cars -- to protect their share of the domestic market. And steel manufacturers would likely oppose them, as they make it more difficult to sell U.S. steel overseas. Protectionist policies often become quite convoluted. Recent shenanigans from the U.S. shrimp industry present an excellent opportunity to examine how big business' support for free trade isn't as firm as conventional wisdom might suggest."

Rent control to go? "Rent control perversely hurts the very people it is supposed to help. New York City, for example, is chronically short of housing, and rents are outrageously high. Many New York apartments are "rent stabilized." It's no surprise that developers prefer to build condominiums or cooperatives, which they can sell outright. Such sales give them real profits-- or at least the prospect of gains--and none of the risks of politicians forcing them to charge rents that are not economical. Chicago, in contrast to New York City, has no rent control, and it has abundant housing for all levels of income earners. Free markets work when politicians allow them to.... the state of Hawaii put a cap on the amount of rent that oil companies can charge their service stations. A federal court has recently ruled that form of rent control as being unconstitutional, saying that such a cap discourages investment and therefore leads to fewer independent dealers. If the Supreme Court upholds this finding, then rent control in New York City and elsewhere could very well fall by the wayside.

Old jobs have to go: "Saving time and freeing up resources for other, more efficient uses, is good. Sure there is displacement and alienation: 50-year-old pipe-fitters who may never again make union scale and parents who rarely see their infants awake. But -- and I apologize for being so presumptuous at my still tender age -- that's the way the world works. Would we prefer to be in stasis and consign the next generation to dead-end jobs at best? Or to deny young people the opportunity to give their progeny the material comforts and fancy educations they may have lacked growing up? Or maybe we should skip the industrial revolution too and have everybody working the fields: full employment!"

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ELSEWHERE

On Dec. 26th., I reproduced two excellent letters from readers of the Pasadena Star Weekly. The lady who wrote the second letter has just emailed me as follows: "Thank you for finding and posting my "Jesusland" letter to the Pasadena Weekly. As you know, I was crucified as a "pseudo-intellectual" who voted for the fascist Bush and am willingly sending my family members to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. As I write this, my son-in-law has been coming under mortar attacks and is bravely doing what he believes to be right for his country and his beautiful little girl. I have been attacked by many Leftists who tell me and secretly hope that my family in the military will die and are fighting a useless battle. My friends served in Vietnam and I have never, never seen such vileness and hatred. You have given me a bit more resolve to go on. Bless You!"

Hmmm... I got a lot of email in response to my posts about the Trinity. I do rather regret raising the matter as I think that what I wrote did disturb a lot of good Christian people whom I really had no wish to disturb. For that reason most of my replies were a bit brief as I was reluctant to continue the discussion. Even so, I think that what I wrote did seriously disturb the faith of some. So that gives me a real dilemma. I could paternalistically refuse to continue the discussion, which does not treat my readers with much respect, or I could continue the discussion under DO NOT GO HERE warning flags. I have chosen the latter. I will for a time put up a separate blog devoted to scriptural exegesis which I would advise readers NOT to visit unless they are prepared to risk exposure to possibly threatening unorthodox views. So see "A scripture blog" for that. Today I look at John 1:3.

There is a rather aptly named Australian Leftist blog called "Cut-price Commentariat". A recent post there referred to "A Western Heart" (a group-blog I post to) as "Mike Jericho's posse of (now) out-and-out fascists". Why? Because one of the contributors welcomed the rumour that Osama has been warned that he risks Mecca being nuked if there are any more attacks on the USA. It should be noted that there have been no attacks on the USA since 9/11/2001 so the rumour is a plausible one. Our Lefty blogger however seems to think that using the THREAT of nuclear attack (which was also what kept the Soviets at bay and ensured the long post-1945 peace in the Western world) is "Fascist". Like most Leftists, however, he conveniently forgets his history. Who was the only national leader who ACTUALLY USED nukes? It was of course Democrat President Harry Truman, the heir of that great Leftist hero, FDR. So Harry Truman was clearly a "fascist" by the lights of our Lefty blogger -- which makes about as much sense as Leftist accusations usually do.

Sad news about the dippy Steve Kangas, whom I referred to yesterday. Gerry Jackson of Brookes News writes: "If this is the Steve Kangas I'm thinking of, he committed suicide sometime ago. Kangas was a very sad case and a very disturbed man. Nevertheless, he was still an "ass" who knew nothing about economic history, economics or any real political history. I completely demolished his defence of FDR's damaging economic policies. His response was pathetic".

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx believed in dictatorship.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. 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 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.

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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ALARM-BELLS FOR AUSTRALIAN BLOGGERS!

Some academics from the peacenik end of the Australian church community were recently commissioned by the Australian Federal government to do a report on "Multi-faith" (translation: Islam-promoting) activities in Australia. Summary here. The full report (PDF) is mostly a combination of mush and political correctness but one of its recommendations is downright hilarious: It recommends that public use of the cross be discontinued and a "composite symbol" be developed to replace it. My mind it quietly boggling at what a composite of the Christian cross and the Muslim crescent might look like! Pretty confusing, I guess.

Another recommendation is not so hilarious, however. Under "Websites and Web Links" it says (p. 115): "The monitoring of Australian-based religious websites by religious leaders themselves and by government authorities charged with administering legislative acts concerning racial and religious discrimination has become a priority". And in their final recommendations under the heading "Constructing a Multi-Faith Australia" (p.125), it says this about websites: "The study uncovered legitimate concerns about the material of several websites of faith communities, particularly their links to racist websites offshore. At this stage, it is appropriate that a process of self-regulation remain in place but the issue needs to be monitored by the Council for Multicultural Australia. Accordingly, it is recommended that: All faith communities be encouraged to put in place mechanisms for a continual monitoring of their websites for materials or links whose content might damage the harmony of Australia's multi-faith society." (Translation: Criticism of Islam on the net must be censored).

So they think the government should censor websites that are critical of Islam but are being all moderate at the moment and are recommending self-censorship only. But the whole idea of political censorship of the net is of course obnoxious. So Australian readers should talk to whomever they can to make sure that this bit of Fascism goes no further. It WOULD of course be the Leftists who want political censorship. Hiding inconvenient information is essential to the Left and they are pretty good at it. How many people know, for instance, that Marx and Engels were antisemitic German nationalists long before Hitler thought of it? But for the web, I doubt that anybody reading this would know that. See MarxWords.

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ELSEWHERE

Wow! You learn every day! Like most people I had always accepted that Hitler's stated reason for invading Russia -- to beat the Russians to the punch before they invaded him -- was just a pretext. I should have known better. Hitler was as brilliant a political operator as he was an incompetent General. Up until the invasion of Poland, all his many victories -- including the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia -- had been political. It now turns out that he was absolutely right about Russia. He may have beaten them to the punch only by months. A book written by Victor Suvorov -- a former major in Soviet military intelligence -- has been excerpted here and what is tells is stunning. Just one point: The Soviets had over a thousand fast WHEELED (trackless) tanks by 1941 -- tanks which could only be used on Germany's autobahns. They would have sunk (and did sink) into the ground on Russia's rough roads. By striking into Russia first, Hitler rendered them all useless. A must-read for anybody interested in history or in militaria.

There was some stunning hypocrisy and inconsistency coming from the Democrats during the confirmation hearing for the Attorney General designate, Alberto Gonzales. All normal form for Leftists, I suppose. See here

Why the rules allowing filibustering may have to be changed: "It is worth recalling that Mr. Bush campaigned throughout 2004 against the Democrats' obstructionism in the Senate, which was most clearly epitomized by the unprecedented filibuster campaign the minority party waged against 10 judicial nominees to the nation's circuit courts of appeal. Indeed, the president's coattails played an indispensable role in ousting Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the leader of the filibuster campaign whose judicial obstructionism played a major role in his electoral defeat. ... During the 108th Congress, in a campaign of unprecedented scope and breadth, Democrat senators successfully voted 20 times to deny cloture on judicial nominees. Invoking cloture would have ended the Democrat filibusters being waged to prevent an up or down vote for the 10 nominees to the appellate courts. ... A review of Senate history illustrates just how unprecedented the Democrats' filibustering campaign against judicial appellate nominees has been. ... From 1949 through 2000, cloture was sought on only 13 judicial nominations, including twice for William Rehnquist, whose nominations as both associate justice and chief justice of the Supreme Court were filibustered. ... During President Bush's first term, however, cloture has been sought on 14 judicial nominations. ... Democrats have successfully filibustered 10 of the 45 circuit court nominations by President Bush that have made it to the Senate floor. That's more than 20 percent. It is a campaign that has been as unprecedented as it has been outrageous."

There is a pompous Leftist ass (as in donkey) called Steve Kangas who claims to have all the answers to why Leftists are right and others are wrong. I guess he has convinced himself but convincing others will be harder. I have shown here how far-Left and quite stupid is his treatment of one topic at least. He starts out by defining socialism in such a way that only Communists can be socialists and then defines socialism in a way that would exclude Stalin from being one! So is ANYBODY a socialist according to Kangas? Only Mr Brain-dead Kangas himself, I guess

One of my readers recommends the book The Virtue of War as making the case for the Iraq involvement from a Christian "just war" perspective. There is an interview with one of the authors of the book here

Awkward for the Left: "Those who made their annual trip to church on Christmas day will have to think again. Research shows that regular churchgoers live longer than non-believers. A 12-year study tracking mortality rates of more than 550 adults over the age of 65 found that those who attend services at least once a week were 35 per cent more likely to live longer than those who never attended church. The research also found that going to church boosted an elderly person's immune system and made them less likely to suffer clogged arteries or high blood pressure. Susan Lutgendorf, psychology professor at the University of Iowa, who carried out the study, said: "There's something involved in the act of religious attendance, whether it's the group interaction, the world view or just the exercise to get out of the house. There's something that seems to be beneficial."

There is an interesting review in Commentary of the book Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare by Jason DeParle. It shows from life-histories how 1990s welfare reform actually worked. Most dole recipients were working anyway and just worked harder when they lost benefits. The review also mentions calls for the government to somehow make black males into better fathers! That strikes me as terminally weird. There really are SOME limits on what governments can be expected to do.

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Engels thought Germany had a right to conquer other countries because it was more civilized. Yes. That was Engels, not Adolf.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. 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 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.

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE TRINITY REVISITED

This is not a religious blog -- with the fact that I am an atheist being no small part of the reason for that. I generally confine my comments on religion to profound reverence for our Christian heritage and profound dislike of Islam and all its works. I did however let my old theological interests off the leash long enough recently to post a few derisive comments about the doctrine of the holy Trinity ("So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God" in the Athanasian formulation). Naturally, I got a bit of return-fire over that. So for those who are interested, a few notes follow by way of a rejoinder:

Maverick Philosopher mentions the trinitarians' favourite text: John 1:1 "And the Word was God". Trinitarians say that John was clearly referring to Jesus in saying that but in so doing they overlook the very point John was making: That Jesus should be seen not only as a person but as a message of enlightenment from God. So it was the message or truth that was divine and eternal rather than the person. If John had meant to say "Christ", he would have. And it actually gets worse for the trinitarians if we concede that John was referring there simply to Christ. Because in the original Greek of the NT, the supreme being is always referred to as "ho Theos" (THE God). And in John 1:1, John specifically calls the Word "theos" (meaning "divine") rather than "ho Theos". So John is specifically saying that the Word was NOT the supreme being. So there is NO scriptural basis for the trinity doctrine.

{A detour here for Greek grammarians: It may be contended that John used the anarthrous form of "theos" purely because it was a predicate. It is true that there is some usage to that effect: Probably a lazy usage where the meaning is otherwise clear. But the question is: Was it John's usage? No. We see just a little later in the same text a predicative usage WITH the article: "kai ee zoe een to phos".}

The remaining point that a couple of people have made is that if Christ is not God what is he? I would have thought that was obvious -- one of the many people who have allegedly gone to Heaven.

And the comment on Northwestern Winds is just puzzling. He quotes Paul to say that you have to believe in the resurrection to be a Christian and seems to think that implies that you have to believe Christ is God. I would have thought it implied the exact opposite! Or was God dead for three days?

[Just a fun footnote: I have crazy interests for an atheist so I thought I might list the books I keep within arm's reach on my desk while I am blogging: Strong's Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible; The Penguin Australian encyclopaedia; The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge; The Macquarie [Australian] Dictionary; Brewer's Politics; The King James Bible; an Italian/English dictionary; a French/English dictionary; a Spanish/English dictionary; a German/English dictionary; The Koran; The American State papers including the Federalist; an American desk encyclopedia; Pears Cyclopaedia; a dictionary of American slang; the poems and songs of Robert Burns; Mein Kampf; a Greek New Testament and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer with Hymns Ancient and Modern. So now you know what I think I often need to know more about!]

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ELSEWHERE

More on Wal-Mart. A reader writes: "My son, who is 20 yrs. old, works for Wal-Mart. He is in his sophomore year of a Business degree. His job at Wal-Mart is putting him through college and he makes good money for a kid his age, well above the minimum wage. But he plans to remain with Wal-Mart for his career. In fact he expects to move up into management this spring. His description of his work environment does not match the descriptions of those anti-capitalist Wal-Mart bashers. He laughed at these allegations. (I asked him specific questions based on the complaints I'd heard online)"

Windschuttle vindicated! Courageous historian Keith Windschuttle has stressed that support for the "White Australia" immigration policy (which excluded Asians) came mainly from the labour unions. Amazingly, the unions are still at it in 2005: "A major union has called on the Federal Government to block a move by a Victorian fruit board to import up to 10,000 fruit pickers from China.... Mr Shorten said "no growers or employers should be allowed to undermine the job opportunities of Australians and their legal wages and conditions. The Howard Government must act to ensure Australian workers are not disadvantaged by the importation of Chinese labour"."

Eurosclerosis: "While American soldiers were delivering emergency supplies to isolated disaster areas and Australian doctors were treating the injured, Europeans were having meetings or, worse yet, trying to set dates for meetings. The French Minister of Public Health, Douste-Blazy, posed a rhetorical question while visiting Sri Lanka: was it "normal" that his colleagues in Brussels held their first discussions on the subject a full ten days after the catastrophe?"

Still not good enough for the critics, of course: "Employers hired workers in 2004 at the fastest pace in five years, with overall payrolls rising by 2.2 million. December's job growth was a bit lower than expected, with the unemployment rate holding at 5.4 percent."

About time: "China is planning to make selective abortions of female foetuses illegal as a way to close the widening gap between the number of boys and girls in the country, the official Xinhua News Agency said."

The British view of other countries (poll results): "A glance down the column headed "The top five" shows the dominance of countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada and also the relevant insignificance of countries on the European continent. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are rated unusually safe and Australians unusually friendly. The USA has a more mixed reputation: dynamic and democratic, yes, but also dangerously unsafe.... most continental European countries scarcely feature in the ratings (and Spain, in particular, does not feature among the top or bottom five in any of them), Italy and France stand out as countries thought to have some of the world's most beautiful buildings and works of art. Against that, the French and the Germans are thought to be among the world's least friendly people. While Britain and several old Commonwealth countries have high ratings across the board, the survey reveals some places as being almost pariah states. Large numbers of Britons admire Indian food - but only provided they can eat it here".

Surprise, surprise! "Ten months after it received $1.6 million from Republican Gov. Rick Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund, the Texas Energy Center has yet to create any new jobs and is without a director. Created in 2003, the center was proposed as a way to transform the energy industry by bringing together business and researches to develop new energy sources. It was to create thousands of jobs and bring millions of dollars in corporate investment to the Houston suburb of Sugar Land"

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx got money by deceiving relatives.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. 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 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.

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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Fun! It looks like Staples has caved in! See the last update here

WAL-MART REVISITED

An excellent email from one of my readers in response to my post yesterday about Wal-Mart:

"Sometimes economic and logical ignorance and anti-capitalist bias just must be rebutted, even though it should be obvious to everyone. In regard to the February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee concerning the "federal costs" to taxpayers of "Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels," the following observations:

First, where do they think Wal-Mart gets these apparently exploited and "badly paid" employees? From the ranks elsewhere of better-paid full-time employees with full benefit packages? I haven't heard about any Wal-Mart gangs shanghaiing people and forcing them to work for Wal-Mart, so Wal-Mart's employees must be there voluntarily, presumable because Wal-Mart offers them better employment opportunities than they had before.

Second, even if it is true (which I doubt) that most of these employees rely on government-provided or subsidized health care and government assistance paid for by "US taxpayers," is it not then likely these same people were also relying on government-provided or subsidized health care and assistance before they voluntarily chose to work for Wal-Mart? So Wal-Mart's employment of these people would, at worst, have no effect on the cost to taxpayers for these people's government-subsidized health care and other government assistance. More likely, at least some of these employees would now qualify for at least some employer-provided benefits and others would have improved their economic lot sufficiently to pay for at least some of their own maintenance and health care, rather than relying on government assistance.

In addition, since these employees must now have better employment opportunities than they had had before, presumably most of them are earning more than they did before, and paying more taxes! In fact, some of these employees may have had no employment before and been surviving entirely on welfare benefits. Therefore, when Wal-Mart employs these people, tax collections go up, use of government-subsidized health care goes down, and welfare benefit payments go down, which is a net benefit to everyone. The only logical conclusion one can draw is that rather than costing "federal taxpayers ... a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees," Wal-Mart's employment of these people reduces the welfare bill the US taxpayers otherwise would pay for these people.

When such obvious logic and facts are omitted from a "report" damning a successful business operation, it is clear the objective is not truth, but rather, to bash successful business and to attack our competitive capitalist system.

I can just see how this logic will play out in the Dems next report attacking not only Wal-Mart, but also all US businesses large and small, for employing anyone at all. Given the actuarial imbalance in the Social Security system, each new hire can be expected to add tens of thousands of dollars to the actuarial deficit. When summed across the entire economy, the deficit is not just a measly $2.5 billion, but rather tens of trillions of dollars! As a result, all these evil businesses in the US are shackling the US taxpayers with TRILLIONS in future tax liability by employing anyone!"

Blithering Bunny has some useful links on the Wal-Mart haters too.

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ELSEWHERE

I have had some good laughs lately, but you should read this dippy email that someone sent Keith Burgess Jackson. Keith's reply is a bit too kind. The moronic email-writer said that he could only evaluate Keith's writings by whether or not Keith's university had a chapter of a prestigious student fraternity. I would have replied that anyone who is so incapable of evaluating arguments that he can rely only on the prestige of the author's employer must be a complete mental cripple. On second thoughts, I think there is a fair chance that the email is a student joke. Keith also has up at the moment some good comments on the many defamatory things that Leftists say about Karl Rove. "The pot calling the kettle black" rather sums it up. I wonder if young people understand that analogy? How many of them have ever seen a black pot or kettle? Perhaps they think the saying should be "The pot calling the kettle Afro-American".

Rafe Champion has just scanned in a great article about the so-called cultural cringe that allegedly afflicted Australian cultural life for most of the 20th century. Knowing the robust independence of most Australians, the whole claim has always seemed rubbish to me and the article demonstrates in great detail what rubbish it is. The only basis for the claim seems to be that certain self-proclaimed Australian cultural elites were not getting as much attention as they felt they deserved. I suspect that they actually got MORE attention than they deserved. I certainly found plenty of Australian books to read when I was a kid in the '50s but I guess much of my reading at that time was distressingly "popular" -- Ion Idriess and the like. I actually think Idriess did an incomparable job of popularizing Australian and Pacific history and I am delighted to say that I think I had read every one of his books by the time I was 12. My interest in history goes back a long way. And I cannot recollect ever hearing a single derogatory word about the Australian poets -- Lawson and Patterson mainly -- whose works I enjoyed learning at school. Lawson's "The Teams" is still one of my favourite poems -- partly because I know how accurate was Lawson's description of the taciturn, hard-working teamsters. My own grandfather was one of them, I am immensely proud to say.

Iraq and Indonesia compared. An email from a reader: "I have just caught up with a friend in the Royal Australian Air Force who has recently been in the Middle East and who has been working on relief flights to Indonesia. He tells me the image we get via TV news of the Iraq situation greatly exaggerates the chaos and violence factor. He says Aceh is the opposite. Nothing on TV shows the extent of the destruction and death. He says you can easily find areas where there are dead and dismembered bodies in every direction".

There are only two Governor's races taking place in the U.S. this year -- in Virginia and New Jersey. Since there are no national campaigns, these governor's races are going to be watched intently. Commonwealth Conservative has the lowdown on the Virgina race.

Brazilian blogger, Luis Afonso reports a couple more of ratty articles about American tsunami aid. Somehow Hiroshima and Nagasaki have got dragged in! I thought my link yesterday about the tsunami being the fault of "THE JOOOOS" was the ultimate but I am beginning to wonder.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a big selection of posts

The latest posting on MarxWords shows that Marx thought it essential to destroy human families -- nice guy!

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. 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 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.

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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