Merry Warriors

Dreary but true

2010-12-16T15:22:00.002Z

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2010/12/come-on-labour.html

Malcolm Stevas

"'If you think that Labour is currently performing even tolerably well as an opposition, stop reading now - because this column is based on a premise on which we might as well agree to disagree. As I see it, Ed Milliband has yet to set out his stall - on anything... lacuna of an effective English narrative of democracy and ... There ought to be an identifiable alternative national narrative... the most important arguments of the ...It is always bad when that adversarial challenge is lacking...there are legitimate, fundamental...The Loyal Opposition has a part to play. I think we should all hope that they soon start playing it.'

How important is all this? Arguably it ought to be fundamental, but really, how important is it in practice? Earlier this week a couple of major polls (assuming one believes their findings to be accurate/useful) confirmed yet again that Labour is doing remarkably well, apparently outstripping the Conservatives in support. This suggest to me yet again that an awful lot of one's fellow citizens have either very short memories or a complete inability to appreciate very basic economic facts of life; that the entrenched voting bloc for the State and its handouts has become exactly the impermeable barrier to economic liberalism which we all predicted & feared; and that the political idealism inherent in Alex Dean's post is all for nothing. Reason and rationality are redundant; psephology consists now of pushing the right buttons to see which policies will provide short-term comforts to that lowest common denominator rump of the electorate whose mindless self-interest governs our lives: the Party offering these will win. Easy. I'll tell my son and his friends to dump their A-levels, get a girl pregnant, sign on, move into a council flat – and vote Labour. Along with many millions of others. Last one to leave the country, etc."

That is effectively a summation of where I am at the moment. The last election showed that for a huge lump of British people, there is nothing to public policy but what I can squeeze from the public exchequer, and by extension my fellow citizens. I will get via the ballot box what I am too lazy to get by honest work or endeavor.

From the "We are such idiots" File

2010-11-16T13:24:00.002Z

'Free Americans, allowing themselves to be treated like prisoners at the county lock-up, just because they want to fly to Granny’s for Thanksgiving. Why?

Napolitano says it’s vital to our security, though nobody can point to a single attack foiled by this fondling. She insists this is a key part of their “layered” approach to air safety.'

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1296617

We could simply select out the middle eastern, African and Pakistani people travelling by air and give them all the full-on security checks of course. You know, actually do the job properly. But then, according to my old colleague at AP, the islamist one, that would make us worse than the terrorists, and would constitute something worse than murder- racism!!

Our civilisation will disappear up its own arse very shortly. That is what happens when you bend over so far backwards to appear even-handed, just and sensitive. Don't get me wrong- there is a place for even-handedness, justice and sensitivity. Just not when it leads to such obvious stupidity as full-body-scanning children, grannies and the obviously non-psychopathic.

If we had had proper security using profiling like the Israelis use before 9/11, it wouldn't have happened. Neither would the shoe bomber and the panty bomber. Given that the terrorists and the islamists like my ex-colleague hate us and don't give us any credit anyway, why are we still trying to prove that we are whiter than white and more virtuous than a Monastery the day before the Pope visits?

We aren't that virtuous, and guess what, it doesn't matter. We are still vastly above the historical standard, which is fine. But let's not get carried away with it.

Its been a weird few days

2010-11-03T23:10:00.003Z

Two absolutely staggering moments on Newsnight. Obama talking today about the situation in America since taking office. This is a paraphrase 'When I came into office, we had an emergency, and because of our necessary response to the emergency, people are feeling government intruding into their lives'. As a nutshell of what has happened in the last two years, that has to be the most mendacious misrepresentation that this most mendacious of presidents has yet come out with.

The other moment was Stan Greenberg, a Clinton advisor talking about the Tea Party and the Republicans. According to him, Obama is going to be right up against it during the next two years because the Tea Party/ Republicans are insular and obsessed with their own 'cult like ideas'. One thing is right. The next two years are going to be very exciting if most Democrats believe that the Tea Party, which 57% of Americans say they agree with, has 'cult like ideas'. I presume Greenberg thinks the Founding Fathers started a cult....

Picking at scabs

2010-10-27T15:17:00.003+01:00

I'm sure that conservatives and libertarians have some of the same mental tics, but why is it that Liberals constantly rehash the same flimsy arguments over and over again, like a acne-riddled teen picking at his scabs?

'The Case for Calling Them Nitwits

They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine. Can being more realistic about who our foes actually are help us stop the truly dangerous ones?'

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-case-for-calling-them-nitwits/8130/

This is about the fifteen-thousandth variation on this argument:

Many Muslim terrorists are badly trained -->

Badly trained terrorists are easy to defeat, and often defeat themselves -->

Muslim terrorism is very little actual threat to us -->

Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our huge anti-terrorism apparatus are completely out of proportion to the threat.

Interestingly, the very same people who aver this will also aver very shortly thereafter that even a tiny threat from man-made global warming means we should dismantle industrial society, live like stone-age paupers and send all our money to Bangladesh, but that is bye the bye.

The most important thing to understand about this argument is that terrorists don't stay incompetent. People learn, they develop skills, they mature into much better terrorists. Nineteen mainly Saudi Muslims demonstrated this quite clearly on September 11, 2001.

Left to their own devices, in their safe havens like the FATA region of Pakistan, the southernmost islands of the Phillipines and Somalia, the terrorists will develop skills and weapons which can cause immense harm on an immense scale. They intend to, and will, unless we stop them.

Lefty nuances about what we should call terrorists did not defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq. Lots and lots of squaddies, Marines and special forces hit squads did. Unpopular though this is with many on the left AND right, that is what will have to happen every time Al Qaeda set up shop somewhere- viz Mauritania, Morocco and Burkina Faso.

All the young men who poured into Iraq to fight the Crusaders, who then died in the great meat grinder, are young men who will not be available in the Maghreb, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and the other battlefronts of our war on Muslim terror. They cannot become undercover terror operatives either. And the ones who went back home, having confronted our might, took with them stories of disillusion and defeat.

In this war, victory will come when the enemy learns that his cause is hopeless. Implacable will to fight on the fronts that exist is what will bring that about. Bone-headed flim-flam like this argument seek to disguise both the nature of the enemy, and the conditions of his defeat.

Shall we ask the government of Somalia whether Al Shabab are nitwits? I don't think so. Or the government of Algeria about Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb?

The time is coming very shortly when we will need to send a big ****ing army to Somalia, and destroy Al Shabab root and branch. The alternative? Another Afghanistan.

Calling a political woman a whore is now OK as long as she is on the right

2010-10-20T12:44:00.003+01:00

'FORGIVE ME for not feeling great sympathy for Meg Whitman — or womanly outrage on her behalf. The California candidate for governor has gotten ample political mileage from being called a “whore’’ — in a cellphone conversation, recorded and leaked, between her opponent, Jerry Brown and an aide (who did the name-calling). In a year filled with formidable female candidates, this may have been the most gender-loaded dustup, and the most predictable. Whitman claimed the high road, demanded a mea culpa for the women of California, and watched the headlines pile up.'

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/10/19/whats_the_shock_about_trash_talk/

Gosh, time flies. Just a few months back, everybody on the left, including I'm sure this idiot, were bemoaning the lack of civility in public life. Like a vast horde of Victorian school marms, they wittered on endlessley about how terribly gauche and beastly those TeaBaggers were being.

And now, in the twinkling of an eye, rudeness and incivility have morphed into 'trash talk' which is apparently AOK! All part of the rough and tumble of a merry democracy, dontcha know? She should toughen up, the stupid bitch!

I am sooooooooooooooo bored with the intellectual vacuity of the left, its asinine whining and 'can't remember what I said yesterday' dopeyness.

Hell hath no fury like that of an electorate scorned

2010-10-16T12:02:00.002+01:00

'"It's a basic, simple message that I think hits the sweet spot of appealing to conservatives and independents simultaneously." To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, it is a message that has the additional advantage of being true.'

'Barone adds: "Liberals who are puzzled by what's happening should take 30 seconds and watch this ad."'

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/10/027471.php

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

First article I ever read about Blair that rings true

2010-10-15T15:32:00.003+01:00

'...I have never been able to detect, in his behaviour or speeches, any evidence of bedrock Labour sentiments, and this memoir fails totally to explain why he drifted into the party. There was never any real reason. It was happenstance. Or rather I prefer the Quixotic explanation offered by his former housemaster at Fettes, Eric Anderson and his wife Poppy. Blair was always a consummate actor, and was given the part of Anthony in the school production of Julius Caesar, although not yet a senior boy. He had a startling success in the part, as one would expect. Poppy did the costumes, and dressed the followers of Brutus in blue. Anthony and his men wore red. "And that," she said, "was how Blair became Labour."'

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3443

Many is the time I mused on this myself. I, unlike about 97% of the British population, have always liked and continue to like Tony Blair. I didn't like his policies in many crucial respects, but as a man, I found him optimistic, warm and humane. He is confident, but not narcissistic and vain like Obama. He is also a good Christian, in an era where those are as rare as hens teeth. He is also one of very few politicians who seems to understand that with great power comes great responsibility.

The story of British politics for at least the last three or four decades has been one of running away from responsibility and the refusal to weild power in the cause of right and good. Obsessed with pampering the not-very-poor of Britain, most British politicians have paid scant regard to the rest of the world, lest they be seen as 'neo-colonial'. Never, never, never accept the premises of your enemies!

'His admiration for Margaret Thatcher was unbounded and had he followed his father and become a Tory MP he would have been her natural successor.'

What a terrible thought. What Mrs Thatcher (PBUH) conspicuously lacked was a successor. What if Tony Blair had been the one? I say terrible because what actually happened was so vastly inferior to that outcome it hardly bears thinking about. Whatever New Labour was, it had a vast sea anchor hauling it backwards called Gordon Brown.

'Blair's instinctual conservatism expresses itself in various ways. One is his good manners. He has the best manners of any political leader I have come across, here or abroad. I happen to believe manners are important, in theological terms an outward sign of inward grace. They spring, certainly in Blair's case, from a profound love of order, which is illustrated, time and again, in his memoir.'

What a wonderful and original thought. It also reveals another strand of why I like the man. Here is another-

'...one of the most touching things to emerge from this memoir is Blair's half-formulated desire to be much more ruthless, at a personal level, than he is. But it is beyond him. One cannot see him, like Lloyd George, snarling at a colleague: "I want him dead chicken by midnight" or, like Churchill, marching up and down the Cabinet room, saying aloud to himself, "I want them all to feel my power."'

I wish, as I'm sure millions of others in the country do, that he had been more ruthless with Brown, throwing him under the bus at any one of dozens of excellent opportunities. But he didn't. He soldiered on. But he wouldn't have been himself (he would have been Peter Mandelson) if he had thrown him overboard.

I have always had a lot of time for Paul Johnson, and this is one of the most interesting pieces about Tony Blair I've read.

Do they really know what they are doing?

2010-10-14T14:26:00.003+01:00

'Speaking in Parliament, Mr Byrne said he backed the idea of cutting the number of quangos, a process he said the previous Labour government had set in motion.

But he accused the government of changing its argument over why they should be axed when it became clear that costs associated with closing them would not lead to any savings and could cost money.

He dubbed Mr Maude "the most expensive butcher in the country".
'Irritating'

He said: "Labour had a plan for steadily saving £0.5bn by carefully closing 25% of quangos over the next few years.

"The Tories now need to tell us whether their desperation for headlines and faster cuts means the cost of closing quangos is actually bigger than the savings. And while they're at it, they should tell us whether their manifesto commitment for 20 new quangos is now on ice." '

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11538534

QUANGOs are and were a very useful way of expanding government and regulation without giving the appearance of doing so. That is why I hate them. And want to see them done away with.

But for the second time in a few weeks, I find myself agreeing with Labour. I feel dirty, but it's true. Francis Maude, the Coalition minister in charge of getting rid of the QUANGOs, said this:

"What people find so irritating is the sense that there is this huge amount of activity incontinently set up, much of it by the last government, by bodies which are not in any way accountable - no one can be held accountable for what they do and that is what we are seeking to change," he told MPs.

Really, that is the main reason for getting rid of QUANGOs?

I'm sorry, when you are spending £135 BILLION a year you don't have, trivial questions of non-accountability are as chaff in the wind. When we have national expenditure at or below national income, we'll get back to precious arguments about whether a QUANGO can be held accountable or not.

The trouble with the Labour criticisms is that the current coalition already have a track record in grandstanding while actually not following through on the meaty substance. Just like with the Child Benefit nonsense, where Labour pointed out that for all the damage caused, only a billion pounds will be saved, out of a total benefits budget of about three hundred billion. And not only that, if the losers from the Child Benefit means testing get a tax rebate to compensate, the exchequer may actually be WORSE OFF.

My faith in the competence of the Coalition is being sorely tested.

A real laugh out loud moment

2010-10-12T17:45:00.001+01:00

'John Simpson says BBC news was never left wing
John Simpson, the BBC World Affairs editor, yesterday attacked Mark Thompson for claiming that corporation used to be left wing, insisting that its news coverage has always been "straight as a die".'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8059005/John-Simpson-says-BBC-news-was-never-left-wing.html

Well, if you say so, John, it must be true.

The Pacific

2010-10-12T14:15:00.003+01:00

Something I just read tweaked my memory, and my annoyance, at the TV miniseries 'The Pacific'.

As campaigns go, the US operations in the Pacific in World War II barely figure as world changing events. While of course for the participants in them they were tremendously important, for everyone else, pretty much not.

This probably very expensive mini-series tries to turn the not epic into an epic. By every measure, the US pacific campaign was strategically unimportant. Imagine a world where Japan controlled all the islands in the Pacific? Mmmm. Scary it isn't. The Phillipines, I hear you ask? Yes, Saudia Arabia might have to forego its domestic staff. Eeek.

On all measures, this was a small-time deal. Numbers of men involved: numbered in the thousands, at most tens of thousands. Both the Eastern and Western fronts in Europe counted combatants by the hundreds of thousands and millions. Strategic value of what was being fought over: most of the islands fought over in the Pacific were insignificant specks in the vast expanse of the ocean.

My biggest bugbear is the strategy chosen by the US commanders. With the exception of a few bigger islands like Guadalcanal and Guam, none of the other islands needed assaulting. Unless the island had airfields or naval bases, they didn't need attacking at all. What is the worst thing about an island? It is very easy to besiege. Just cut it off from supply by sea and air and wait.

So what did the US Admirals choose to do? Yup. No waiting!! Hell no. We can't just wait six months until they are all starved and thirsty, and just take them prisoner. Nope. Gotta go in there with guns blazing and get a few hundred more marines killed. Makes for much better television.

Even the bigger islands, like the Phillipines and Okinawa, could have been reduced slowly, with the understanding that the Japs had no means of resupply. So rather than charging at the machine guns, the US could simply have squeezed like a python, reducing the area controlled by the enemy and denying him movement and resupply. But no. Lives must be expended, heroes created, and myths promulgated.

Mostly though, what annoys me about 'The Pacific' is that there is no equivalent of the lavish mini-series for the many, vastly more strategically significant Eastern front campaigns. For no good reason that I know of, the Russians have never taken the time or the effort to memorialise the seven million men who died fighting the Nazis in this way. I wish they would, as an antidote to that strain of American braggadocio which continually tells us that it was they who 'won the war'.

Stop bleating or people might notice

2010-10-12T13:02:00.005+01:00

'First, since we don't have a well-integrated sense of what our values are--we find it very hard to express what we stand for in any kind of inspiring, compelling way.'

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/78278/building-the-progressive-brand

Many progressives are ignorant. Ignorant of history, ignorant of political theory, ignorant of human nature... just plain ignorant. Being vague and dealing in vast generalities are in my experience almost invariably a cover for not knowing very much.

But this is really an insignificant factoid.

Progressivism has been immensely successful. So why don't progressives feel successful?

Progressivism has been vastly more successful in the real America of the last seventy years than conservatism, yet progressives still see themselves as weak and ineffectual. Despite changing America from a nation of free enterprise and tough individuality to one dominated by big business, big government, corparatism and dependency on state programs, progressives don't see themselves as successful.

And conversely, despite enormous amounts of evidence to the contrary, conservatives in America consider themselves successful, and their nation still evincing all the old pre-New Deal qualities. Go figure.

Indubitably, I could do a better job of summing up both the real 'accomplishments' and the real principles of progressivism than many progressives, but there is no question that they have transformed America.

The people with the real problem are American conservatives who don't see that vast swathes of what is around them was created by progressive policies. How much of US agriculture is subsidised by the Federal Government? Who owns US airports? Who owns most of the US airlines? How is the vast bulk of old age medical care provided in the US? How much of the United States is owned by one government agency or another? How much of US business is tied to government by very strong ties of 'lobbying' and other corrupt practises? How much of what goes on in the US is now directly or indirectly connected to government funding?

Because most elected representatives in the US have very low levels of knowledge or concern about wider issues of public policy, most of this has happened with very little or no resistance from the Republican party. In fact, large amounts of it were their work.

The US has a vast distance to travel if it ever chooses to go back to its pre-New Deal incarnation.

So why do progressives feel like failures? Why are they afraid the their brand is weak?

What progressives should be immensely proud of is that under the radar, without ever having a strong brand, they have transformed America into a stodgy, statist, corporatist monolith. That vast swathes of their policy are now the status quo. And that conservatives think they won!

There is the very first twinkling of recognition in the American people that their country became a progressive nightmare while they were busy with personal matters, a recognition prompted by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin mostly. But for now, most Americans are still asleep.

My advice- don't wake them up.

That light at the end of the tunnel is a train

2010-09-29T16:33:00.003+01:00

Amidst the constant swishing back and forth of zillions of issues in the blogosphere, there is one which never seems to get any air time.

During the Healthcare debate, it became obvious that most Americans, whether you lump them onto the Left or the Right, don't know much about how America works. Most Americans don't seem to understand how far the Progressive agenda has already transformed the country. After military spending, the three main costs of the US Federal government are: Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. If the people in the Tea Party are actually who and what they say they are, then those four things are all in the cross-hairs for huge cuts.

But if you go item by item, and ask most Americans which of those four they want cut, most don't want ANY of them to be cut.

Now as a Liberal I would of course advocate doing away with Medicare and Social Security, which grossly distort the US healthcare market and pensions market respectively. Medicaid is essential, although it could well be reformed to make sure that its resources go where they ought. And military and intelligence spending should always be the last thing cut, as protecting the country is the first job of government.

But most Americans want Medicare and Social Security gold plated, rather than eliminated. So how can the enormous US debt ever be repaid, and how can the yearly deficits ever decrease?

This thing isn't over. It hasn't even begun.

Well at least we can all finally agree on something

2010-09-29T16:26:00.002+01:00

'Obama: 'We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan'

'President Obama dispatched his national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, and CIA Director Leon Panetta to Pakistan for a series of urgent, secret meetings on May 19, 2010.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/28/AR2010092805092.html?hpid=topnews

That was after yet another planned atrocity by yet another Pakistani, this time in Times Square, New York.

Oh well, after nine years repeating the same thing over and over and over again, it seems that finally people have noticed the facts and begun to respond to them. Ho Hum.

Which Election was he watching Update

2010-09-29T11:45:00.003+01:00

Recently I critiqued Lord Ashcrofts analysis of the recent British general election. Here is more analysis from the venerable Norman Tebbit:

'Some while ago I wrote that whether the Tories won or lost the election, much of the praise or blame should go to Michael Ashcroft. His book makes plain his disappointment and puzzlement that the worst government we have endured within living memory, probably for more than a century, was not absolutely thrashed. Of course the grossly unfair distribution of seats made it harder for David Cameron. In 2001, 10.7 million Labour votes, against 8.4m for the Conservatives and 4.8m for the Lib Dems, yielded a majority for Tony Blair. But this year, when the numbers were virtually reversed with 10.7m votes for Cameron, 8.6m for Gordon Brown and 6.8m for the Lib Dems, Cameron was 20 short of a majority.

Nonetheless had Cameron earned as many supporters as Margaret Thatcher in 1979 (13.7million), 1981 (13.1m) or 1987 (13.8m), he would have been home and dry. Before the campaign started the Tories had been well in the lead, but the more the electors heard from Mr Cameron and his team, the fewer liked it sufficiently to come out to vote.'

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/normantebbit/100055550/michael-ashcroft-is-right-the-tories-will-need-much-better-thinking-if-they-are-to-beat-ed-milibands-labour-party-in-2015/

So the crucial question left over from the election as far as the Tories are concerned is, who are those three million people who will not vote for David Cameron?

I think the answer lies in the numbers. Over a period of eight years, thirteen million people voted for Thatcherism. Almost certainly the mostly the same thirteen million people. Have those people stopped believing in Liberal economics and personal freedom and personal responsibility? Very highly unlikely.

So why would three million of them not vote for Cameron? Because what was on offer is not Thatcherism, or even a debased Thatcherism. It is Statist and Big Green. A cursory perusal of the campaign literature and Camerons speeches will confirm this.

So why would Ashcroft tell a different story? Why would he launch one completely spurious accusation against Cameron, that the Conservatives launched zillions of 'relentless counterproductive attacks'? Like I said before, if they did, I missed them all.

Is Ashcroft trying to create the conditions for the next General Election, where his version of history becomes the starting point for how to run a successful campaign? Because the numbers say he will never be right.

Thatcherism was successful because it ditched crucial parts of Conservatism. It was much more egalitarian and against established power and paternalism than the Conservatism of the first half of the twentieth century. It offered the scruffy white van man the heft of a major political party against the snobbery and entitlement still endemic in British society. It offered those with no 'family' the possibility of wealth, success and genuine improvement. It also started down the road of destroying the baleful nexus of government and big business which is the greatest enemy of capitalism, free markets and wealth creation.

But then John Major took over. A man who certainly doesn't understand anything about economics of any variety, or perhaps which shoe should go on which foot. The whole Thatcherite project gradually ground to a halt. With the Labour takeover of 1997, business as usual resumed. As the state resumed its steady expansion, small businesses were progressively squeezed, and big business resumed its love affair with big government.

So there was a choice in 2010. Would the Conservative party restart the Thatcherite project, which is essentially Libertarian, or go back to paternalism, elitism and pandering to whatever cultural fads are current? You know the answer already...

Poor logic, poor language, poor history

2010-09-29T11:07:00.004+01:00

'YES: Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?

Naimark, author of the controversial new book Stalin’s Genocides, argues that we need a much broader definition of genocide, one that includes nations killing social classes and political groups. His case in point: Stalin.

The book’s title is plural for a reason: He argues that the Soviet elimination of a social class, the kulaks (who were higher-income farmers), and the subsequent killer famine among all Ukrainian peasants – as well as the notorious 1937 order No. 00447 that called for the mass execution and exile of “socially harmful elements” as “enemies of the people” – were, in fact, genocide.

Is murdering a class somehow better than murdering a race? Is fomenting class-hatred somehow better than fomenting race-hatred? Why or why not?'

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/106974/

Why does everything have to be one thing?

Like the 'discussion' about whether the campaign in 1915 against the Armenians by the Ottoman government and individual Turks constituted Genocide or not, this 'discussion' about whether Stalins mass-murder was Genocide is sterile.

The accepted definition of Genocide is the attempt to murder all of a particular tribe or people. If a mass-killing is NOT an attempt to murder all of a particular tribe or people, it is inappropriate to use the word, and only distorts the truth.

Why do Stalins murders need the label of Genocide? Are they not evil enough if they are just extra-judicial killing on an enormous scale? Are they not evil enough if they are just the callous deprivation of the means of life to millions of Ukranians? Are they not evil enough if they are the paranoid deportation of millions to a very hostile environment where the attrition rate is staggeringly high?

The need to invoke Genocide constantly is a sign of how debased public discussion of events in the world has become. To some extent this is because rolling news needs a constant stream of superlatives, but also because the general use of language has become very imprecise and simplistic.

Much more important than these label discussions is to understand what happened. Watch 'Burnt by the Sun', the harrowing film about Stalins purge of his army by Mikhalkov. It is very hard, especially for those in the West, to really see these vast murders for what they are- millions upon millions of personal tragedies and betrayals. The utter pointlessness of them. The almost incalculable waste of human talent, spirit and value.

Very few people hate Bolshevism and Communism more than I do. But a coherent and accurate description of the tremendous crimes they committed in the twentieth century does not require the word 'genocide'. Let their panoply of crimes bear the correct description in each case.

Declining moral standards and world leadership

2010-09-28T11:38:00.002+01:00

'Over the long term, what American policy makers need to remember (and what I fear too many have forgotten in both parties over the last couple of decades) is that America’s international standing and security ultimately depend on health of our domestic economy — and that the economy in turn ultimately depends on the dynamic, self-reliant, entrepreneurial and, yes, virtuous character of the American people. Unless our educational, cultural and political institutions reflect and support these characteristics, American power could rot away at the core.'

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/09/26/in-the-footsteps-of-the-kaiser-china-boosts-us-power-in-asia/

This triggered a succession of memory vignettes- of American soldiers singing hymns in the middle of the Borneo jungle in World War II, of the staggering tenacity of the US military in Vietnam, of a conversation in a video game I own between two Russian soldiers- First Soldier "We are trapped! The Americans will catch us and kill us!" Second soldier "Of course they won't kill us! They might capture us and interrogate us, but they don't kill captured soldiers".

The equation which holds most in our world is this- the more you get to know Americans as hegemons, the more you like them.

But as US culture sinks ever further into the filth, and as more and more 'sophisticated' Americans desert God and Christianity, for how much longer will Americans show their traditional virtues? And will they be worthy hegemons when they cease to do so?

Which election was he watching?

2010-09-18T23:57:00.003+01:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/8011043/Lord-Ashcroft-delivers-tough-verdict-on-Conservative-election-failings.html

'On Monday Lord Ashcroft will publish his verdict on the party's failure to win an overall majority in the May general election. In his analysis, the Tory life peer criticises the party for:

Failing to get its "message" and "brand" across to the voters.

Relentless counterproductive attacks on the Labour Party and Gordon Brown.

Agreeing to a televised debate of political leaders which enabled the Liberal Democrats to seize the "real change" initiative.'

While of course Lord Ashcrofts points are relayed to us via a journalist, and therefore may have been morfed to their disadvantage, these are hardly razor sharp observations. Having watched Karl Rove dissecting things the other day with acerbic wit and brevity, this seems very dull fare.

I am not really a politics nerd. But I probably pay more attention to politics than average, and here is my take on the Ashcroft critique.

Once David Cameron threw out all the discernably conservative positions on things, there was virtually no Conservative brand in existence. First and foremost, the small easy-to-pay for state. Ditching this alone probably cost the Conservative party its crucial majority. Almost from the beginning, Cameron kept on about how much he loved the Government bureacracies, especially the NHS. But also the Post Office. Not forgetting the BBC. And definitely the education industry. Etc etc.

Cameron signed up to virtually the whole Green agenda too. He also kept on about how great immigrants are, and how very much they've done for the country. He said we should empathise with hoodie-wearers, and presumably all the people on those sink estates who don't wear them too. He was critical of the intervention in Iraq, and gave succour to the anti-war crowd. He applauded the government apparatchiks and criticised greedy businessmen.

It was probably about this time that most conservatives realised that the Conservative party wasn't conservative any more. That it was now essentially just another centre-left party touting all the tired claptrap that the centre-left have been spouting for eighty-ish years.

So what Brand is Ashcroft talking about? That crappy stylised Oak tree which is now the 'symbol' of the Conservative Party? If he can give a coherent answer to my question, he ought to because there are thousands of ex-Conservative voters out there who don't think the Conservative brand exists.

If the Conservatives had a 'message' during the last election I missed it. I thought the message was that Gordon Brown and his scabrous allies had spent countless billions during the good times, and got precious little for them, while telling us that the good times would never end (no more boom and bust?); and then when the good times ended insisted that no blame accrued to them and they couldn't possibly have known it was going to happen. So, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has NO role in overseeing the City of London financial sector? None at all?

Which brings us to Lord Ashcrofts second point. Where was I during the 'Relentless counterproductive attacks on the Labour Party and Gordon Brown'? I must have been down the shops or in the pub, because I heard virtually no criticism of the godawful job Labour had been doing. And I'm pretty sure I know why. Cameron intended to carry on doing mostly the same things Labour were doing, and he didn't want too much cognitive dissonance about that.

We faithfully watched the debates waiting for David Cameron to launch some broadsides against the inviting flanks that Labour could not protect, due to their hideous mismanagement of the country... and they never came. No statistics were proffered about the stupendous size of the public sector (1 in 5 employees in Britain works for the state), and the truly enormous size of the annual budgets. Nothing about the budget deficits, which were and are taking Britain into a morass of debt. Nothing about the vast sums of money which went into virtually unimproved public services, or spent on plush salaries and pensions for public sector workers- much better salaries and pensions than the ones of the people funding the whole sorry mess.

If it had been a boxing match, Cameron wouldn't have troubled the scorers. His aim seemed to be to show the public that he was nice, and that the Conservative party was nice, and that when he was Prime Minister, things would continue to be nice.

Surprisingly, the general public found this milquetoast pap unappealing, perhaps even nauseating. I know I did. Far from providing red meat, Cameron seemed to want to take us all back to infancy, and soothe us with baby-talk.

I could sum up my impressions of the three contestants on the 'I want to be Prime Minister' Quiz show very quickly. Nick Clegg came across as a very hard-sell used car salesman, who had lots of zippy catch phrases and fresh air for policies. His 'a plague on both your houses' posturing got old after about five minutes, and I thought his bluster demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt the terrible weakness at the heart of the LibDem project. Gordon Brown alternated between vaudeville villain (I kept on imagining him with a black eye-patch) and slimy ageing bon viveur. His on-screen fight with his inner grumpy bastard was deeply reminiscent of the ex-Nazi scientist in 'Dr Strangelove'. How we laughed!

And I think there was some other guy there, but I'm not sure. He was as memorable as a department store mannequin, but not quite as human. I can't remember a single distinctive policy he was touting, nor a decent line, nor any wit nor emotion. Insofar as it is usual for politicians to be animated by ideas, he was completely inanimate.

If I were to sum up my view of the Conservative campaign, it is: the Conservatives believed in nothing apart from the sheer inevitability of people being sick of Labour, and taking whatever the other guys were proffering. They couldn't be bothered to find out what people actually wanted from them, and settled for offering sweet nothings, reassuring noises and very non-Conservative positions on pretty much all the important issues in British public life. They tried to be as bland and inoffensive as possible, present a facade of competence and capability, and duck all substantive questions.

I was completely confirmed in this take on the campaign when I watched a program the other day about how the coalition was formed. The LibDems found the Conservative negotiating team strangely amenable. Weirdly amenable. Almost as if they had no real red lines at all. It all got a bit jokey and informal.

Why it had taken the LibDems soooooooooo long to realise that there wasn't a fag paper between their own 'beliefs' and those of David Cameron and his little cabal is a mystery, but then they aren't all that bright.

The fact is, there is now an opening in British politics for a mainstream right-wing party. Anybody fancy starting it?

Adventure and Excitement are in the Eye of the Beholder

2010-09-07T11:36:00.003+01:00

'Stephen Fry has said there is a culture of fear at the BBC which is creating "incredibly bland" programmes.'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11200974

'The host of BBC Two's QI told the Radio Times executives with "cold feet" were shying away from taking creative risks. "A lot of the adventure and excitement have gone out of television programming and a lot of it is just down to fear."'

So far, so Rorschach test. For the 'artistic elite', who will all indubitably be nodding their heads in agreement with Mr Fry at this point, there just aren't enough TV shows about gay sex, 'shocking' taboo-breaking anti-Christian diatribes, and very far left fantasies. You know, adventurous and exciting.

For the average license fee taxpayer, the reaction will probably be similar. With very few exceptions, I would reckon the favourite TV show of most Britons are American, whether it is Desperate Housewives, House, Dexter, NCIS, The Wire, Law and Order, CSI or 24. Most of those shows have British equivalents which are unwatchable. Of the recent offerings, big budget shows tend to have terrible achilles heals. Robin Hood seemed to have been written by a twelve year old girl, and Dr Who is jumping the shark on a regular basis. The one or two-parter dramas are excruciatingly dull, often turned off after ten minutes. All of them seem to deal with the same stock characters in the same stock situations. Mind numbing.

And lastly, there are weirdos like me, for whom many of the TV programs I would like to watch just aren't made, not in the US or the UK or anywhere else. Back in about 1992, there were a series of brilliant TV programs, about an hour long, on Afghanistan. They came on at about half past midnight. I watched anyway. They were superb. They covered Afghan geography, politics, current events, tribal issues, national figures of prominence and loads of other things. Most of what I know about Afghanistan came from watching those programs. Not only have I not seen anything like them for anywhere else, I've never seen them re-shown.

These programs leveraged what television can be- an extraordinary tool for learning and going to places you could never go personally. There are zillions of places and things which could get a similar treatment. How many people know what actually happens in the City of London finance houses? How many people know what the hinterland of Russia is like? How many people know the real story of the Royal Navy? Not just the skim, but the real story.

I don't know how many people there are like me. But there must be some. And for us, TV is pretty much a desolate wasteland of trivia and pap. No meat. If I had a billion pounds, one of the first things I'd do is start a TV company to make the TV shows I'd actually pay money to someone to watch. Probably wouldn't ever make a profit, but I'd watch!

Wajid Hasan, incompetent buffoon

2010-09-03T10:34:00.002+01:00

'Wajid Hasan accused the ICC of "playing to the public gallery" and said the council had "no business" taking action while a police investigation was on-going.'

'...The commissioner added that he had talked to the cricketers and had concluded that they were innocent.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/pakistan/7979275/Pakistans-high-commissioner-attacks-ICC-for-suspending-players-facing-police-questions.html

Hasan was also shown on the BBC Ten O'Clock news last night saying that the Pakistani trio had been 'set up'.

Whatever else this catastrophe for cricket has demonstrated, it has shown the Hasan is an idiot who isn't up to his job. Denying reality, acting as judge and jury and making completely unfounded accusations about our police are not helpful to the relations between Pakistan and Britain.

Social Justice for Britain

2010-08-06T13:55:00.002+01:00

Absolutely bizarre discussion of welfarism and its cures.

'John McTernan v Neil O'Brien: Can Iain Duncan Smith fix Britain's welfare problem?
Two Telegraph bloggers, John McTernan and Neil O'Brien, debate whether Iain Duncan Smith is really thinking the doable.'

America did welfare reform successfully, but what they did would never work here because 'the disincentives to work - the welfare trap - was already far less severe in the US than it they are here.'

We should spend money on 'increasing the financial incentive to work, or putting it into deflection from welfare, improving welfare to work services, better case management, and more job-focused interviews.' Yeah, that should do it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7928349/John-McTernan-v-Neil-OBrien-Can-Iain-Duncan-Smith-fix-Britains-welfare-problem.html

John McTernan: 'Thinking the unthinkable, as Frank Field was tasked, is epistemologically impossible. Instead you are driven to think the undoable or do the unthinkable.'

Eh? Baffle them with bullshit, indeed. Apparently, because Britain has an enormously Byzantine benefits system which now has a manual 8,370 pages long, nobody can ever reform it. Even if they try, they won't be able to. My mind immediately returns to 1980, when all the economists in the country wrote the letter to the Times saying what a catastrophe cutting taxes and public spending would be, just before the economy rebounded and the decade of growth and great business began...

Neil O'Brien: 'Might introducing "friendly" reforms which many work pay more, thereby allow politicians the space to introduce other, tougher reforms? Those "push factors" we've talked about do work. But when they are introduced they tend to be perceived as harsh. Indeed, some of Bill Clinton's own advisers resigned over his 1996 reforms – even though they helped millions of people in the long term.'

Harsh? Harsh? Believing it is your right to sit around your house while other people work hard to provide for you is evil. Correcting that situation is not harsh. It is salutary and right.

Here is my solution to this entire problem, point by point. The intent is that all the systems of the state should militate towards the best ends:

1) The national tax system would be replaced by a 15% flat tax.
2) There would be no indirect taxes at all.
3) All public housing would be privatised.
4) Every neighborhood which required it would have free restaurants funded out of local taxes.
5) One benefit still available would be for incapacity. This would be received only after claimants went before a medical/psychiatric board and were examined.
6) Another benefit would be a training bursary. This could be applied for, but only granted after a test of the applicant to make sure that the bursary was good value for money for the taxpayer.
7) The only other benefit would be part-funding of apprenticeships in any industry or business.
8) The NHS would be privatised. People would be given information about setting up Health Care savings accounts, and purchasing Catastrophic Health Insurance.
9) There would be no quangos. Any legitimate regulation or oversight function would be done directly by central government.
10) Education would be non-universal. All schools would be privatised.
11) Eliminate the minimum wage.
12) Allow only well-educated, skilled immigrants into Britain.

The main economic effect of these changes would be to reserve most capital in the private sector, and allow workers to keep a very large part of their earnings. Workers would get to choose what goods to purchase and which not. So for instance, there would almost certainly be far fewer schools, but the quality of those schools would skyrocket.

There would be no skulking around at home option. Given that the cost and ease of employing people would fall significantly, far more casual work and permanent work would be available. Also, because the overall cost of living would be greatly reduced, people would have more choice about how much time they worked.

Of course, it would mean social changes. People would have to move to find work. People like my aunt would have to forsake their fantastic lifestyles. She currently lives by herself in a three-bedroom council house, in a beautiful leafy-green Hertfordshire village. She gets more than a hundred pounds a week disability benefit, despite only having a crooked finger. She even gets money for taking 'Adult Education' classes like Yoga and Pilates. For her, these changes would be disastrous. But for the millions of hardworking poor people who just scrape by while paying the enormous (53%) tax burden to support people like my aunt, life would be immeasurably better.

You want social justice? We can have social justice.

You guys are starting to creep me out

2010-08-04T18:11:00.003+01:00

'Climate change: It's time to talk, and act, tough
Environmentalists have tried the compromise route. It hasn't worked.'

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mckibben-climate-20100804,0,7179186.story

You've spent months wooing her, sending her flowers, and making mooney eyes at her. She finally agrees to go out with you on a few dates, and you even manage to bed her a few times. But she wasn't that impressed. And soon you noticed that she had moved on to other things (people, really).

So what do you do? Most of us sigh a lot, drink more than usual, perhaps indulge in a few fantasies about revenge acts, and after a few weeks, get on with our lives. But then there is that small percentage of the population who JUST CAN'T LET GO. They become obsessed, unbalanced, vacillating between ecstatic love and murderous hate, and start stalking their paramour.

Well, I guess we know where the Global Warmmongers fall now. We toyed with their affections for a while. Many of us dutifully recycled stuff which was promptly sent to a landfill somewhere, bought Fair Trade tea and dolphin friendly Tuna chunks. We bought a tiddly little car because it got slightly better mileage. We even changed our holiday plans so our trip wasn't as humoungously CO2 producing.

But then when the Enviro-demands became ever more shrill, ever more detached from reality and ever more punitive, we started to get a bit jaded. There seemed to be nothing you could do, nothing you could buy and nothing you could eat that didn't make you some kind of enviro criminal.

And then they told us that they were going to dismantle our economies, force us to stop using power sources that work and replace them with ones which are deeply inferior, and confiscate enormous quantities of our wealth as punishment for eco-crimes and give it to people in Mozambique and Bangladesh. Or the planet would SELF-DESTRUCT!!!!??!!!

At this point, most people started thinking, mmmm- yeah I'm not on board. Sorry. Enough is enough. I'm quite happy with my carbon footprint thanks.

Wuh oh. So now we see what the response of our eco-masters is. You can't just stop loving us! We insist that you love us. We demand that you love us. Where are the old feelings? Remember how we used to chat about saving the world in the college cafeteria? Remember how idealistic we were? Make it like the old days! Or else we'll come round and blow shit up, or maybe slash your tires.

We have a stalker, people.

Ok then, Ban the Burka

2010-08-02T16:52:00.002+01:00

'Newt’s key insight is that we are engaged not in a war against terror but a war against Sharia, i.e., Islamic law.'

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2010/07/31/islam-vs-the-west-what-you-need-to-know/

I really like Roger Kimballs stuff. But very rarely does he change my mind on a major issue. That just happened with the Burka ban.

It has been my consistent position that in a free country the government does not prescribe or proscribe clothing types or styles. Got nothing to do with them what I want to wear outdoors or indoors. Except, perhaps, in the case of the Burka.

Islamism is a political enterprise whose goal is world domination. As such, a law for Britain banning the Burka would symbolise our determination that Islamism never succeed here. The Burka is a flag for Islamists, a way of promoting themselves and their difference from us. It is also a means of separating women from men in a way deeply inimical to the conduct of relationships in the way free societies do. Banning them in public deprives the Islamists of this very visible flag of membership, and strikes at the heart of Sharia- its insistence that it decrees how every aspect of your life should be run.

This was understood by the founders of Turkey, who wanted to promote the secular values of the west. Although these have been deeply undermined recently by the Erdogan government, the bans on headcoverings and other anti-sharia decrees were in place for many decades. They did symbolise the desire to overthrow the worst and most oppressive parts of sharia, and replace them with a more open, lively and free way of live.

I still don't like a government telling people what to wear and what not to wear- but I feel an exception is warranted in this particular case, because of the particular history of the Burka and its place in Islamism.

The failed Empire

2010-08-02T15:07:00.004+01:00

“We are in Afghanistan for one express purpose: Al Qaeda,” he said. “Al Qaeda exists in those mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We are not there to nation-build. We’re not out there deciding we’re going to turn this into a Jeffersonian democracy and build that country.”
Joe Biden

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/world/asia/01afghan.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all [Hat Tip: Instapundit]

How different is this twenty first century attitude to the one the British brought with them to south Asia in the nineteenth. While not consciously on a crusade on behalf of British culture, habits and methods of governance, the Scotsmen, Irishmen, Ulstermen, Welshmen and Englishmen who went to India were mostly fiercely proud of the British way. They were happy to impose what they believed were superior ways of doing things over what was there already.

As a consequence, over two hundredish years, India became quite British. Certainly its ruling classes did. Which is why India has a working court system, decent policing, a working democracy, government policies overtly geared to helping the poorest and least advantaged, and distinctions like the primacy of the civilian leadership over the military and the separation of powers between the branches of government. India is definitely a work in progress, but there should be immense optimism about its capacity to build on the framework gifted to them by Britain.

So, what is America taking to Afghanistan? Bashful self-loathing, American Idol and a very obvious desire to skedaddle at the first opportunity. Not much there to really take on board, is there? I can't see young Afghans really wanting to sign up to this dismal prospectus. Where the British were happy to use their supreme technological, organisational and military advantages to impose their systems on their subjects, America isn't. Far from trumpeting their Christianity, their democracy, their equality and their humanity, and unabashedly bringing them to the poor heathen of the Afghanistan, they are content to have the Afghans continue in their squalor, with a few 'western' bits glued on, like a few 'schools' and 'clinics'.

America is not even achieving these extremely low ambitions. Is America capable of being imperial at all?

Stick to your guns, Mr Cameron

2010-08-02T09:54:00.005+01:00

'Pakistan PM hits back at David Cameron terror claim
Pakistan's prime minister has refuted David Cameron's claim his country is ''exporting terror'' as President Asif Ali Zardari presses ahead with a visit to Britain this week.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/7920907/Pakistan-PM-hits-back-at-David-Cameron-terror-claim.html

Refute: 'to prove to be false or erroneous, as an opinion or charge'. According to Alistair Jamieson, President Zardari has not simply provided his own highly partisan opinion about whether Pakistan sponsors terrorism, but has refuted David Cameron! Very poor writing indeed. We used to expect far more from Telegraph writers, but sadly standards have dipped precipitously.

David Cameron will have seen all the voluminous proof of Pakistans duplicity, and the background briefings explaining that duplicity and aggression have been the hallmarks of the country since its invention in 1947. Whether or not it was politic or indeed diplomatic to talk about the real Pakistan, especially to an Indian audience, Mr Camerons comments are precisely correct. President Zardaris comments refute nothing. They are simply another reiteration of the longstanding Pakistani tradition of saying one thing while doing the polar opposite.

What is amazing is that it has apparently taken sixty two years for everyone besides India to notice these really nasty Pakistani habits. And just because there are a million Pakistanis living in Britain, sadly, does not mean we the British should cave in to their pathetic blackmail.

Great news for Britain and for India

2010-07-26T13:38:00.002+01:00

'David Cameron will this week lead a British mission to India five times the size of last week’s delegation to America.'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/david-cameron/7910086/David-Cameron-to-lead-huge-British-mission-to-India.html

This is great news. I believe India is a natural ally and partner for Britain. While it has some serious problems, in comparison to most of its neighbors India is a beacon of Democracy, the rule of Law and inclusive politics. It has shown over a long period a serious intent to rule on behalf of all its myriad of peoples, castes, religions and constituencies.

The fact that it is now an emergent capitalist economy as well means we should be working as closely together with it as we can, to everyones benefit.

We are looking at a commercial tie-in with India ourselves. I believe it will be both a short and long term success.

Obama slams GOP plan

2010-07-24T21:36:00.003+01:00

'President Barack Obama says ~~the surge~~ an economic plan by ~~George W Bush~~ the House Republican leader just repeats ~~failed military~~ job-killing policies of the past and would take ~~Iraq~~ the country "backward at a time when we need to ~~get out of Iraq~~ keep America moving forward."'

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2010/Jul/24/obama_slams_gop_plan__gop_warns_of_tax_hikes.html

We work for our living. Do you?

2010-07-06T17:05:00.003+01:00

I have a cousin who, every time London comes up in any context, runs through a tired litany of complaints about it. London is expensive, London is dirty, Londoners are rude, London is this, London is that. Of course he has never actually lived in London, but that doesn't seem to matter. Nor does the fact that I have done so for the last twenty years...

For at least the last 1300 years, English people have been having this conversation. Is there a new twist to it in 2010?

Apparently, '...the biggest charge against London is that it sucks talent and resources out of the rest of the country

Ever since Dick Whittington left the Forest of Dean in the 14th Century in search of his fortune in London, ambitious provincials have headed to the city in search of streets paved with gold.

Did Dick Whittington need London's size and variety to find his niche? Or did his departure to the capital deprive the Forest of Dean of an outstanding Lord Mayor, maybe even one who could have arranged some golden paving for his home town?'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/10508673.stm

Sucks? Really? Or do talented people gravitate towards the place where their talents will most likely bring them substantial rewards?

I would say that there is a substantial amount of evidence that London could look out on the rest of England, and say, "Are you going to let us do all the work?"

Most of the other big cities in England are now hideous wrecks. In the absence of the great cavernous heavy industries of the mid-twentieth century, the occupants seem to have largely given up on work, and decided to concentrate on soap operas and heroin. They can do this largely because of the enormous amounts of money generated by the City of London.

If the new coalition government can achieve anything in the next five years, I would like it to be this. Take away the 'sitting around on your arse at other peoples expense' option from the five and a half million people currently doing that. You will notice that I don't say 'sitting around on your arse' option. That is the great big con which Labour constantly pull. I am happy for those five and a half million people to continue sitting around on their arses - just not at taxpayer expense.

Labour have created a norm whereby millions of people deem that if any effort is required of them- whether it be moving towns, changing careers or learning something- then the government is being cruel and heartless. A promise has been given that their lives will be easy apparently. Well, nobody outside of the Labour party has promised that, and Labour did it with the intention of stealing taxpayer money to fulfil it.

So if by 2015, there isn't the option of arse-sitting, I will be a very grateful man. Because if there is one thing that can be said about London, it is that by and large, it works for its living.

Some thoughts about the Gulf Oil Spill

2010-07-05T17:40:00.002+01:00

I was watching Fox news a couple of days ago, and they were lambasting BP yet again for 'ignoring offers of much larger oil skimming vessels'. Fox have been extremely militant in their anti-BP vitriol. So that wasn't too surprising. But BP don't have the big Dutch skimming vessels because a protectionist 1920's US law prevents them from operating in US waters and Fox know that.

Are Fox anti-British? Are American conservatives anti-British? I am beginning to think so. The Romans were famous for cossetting their allies, and were extremely careful to keep their side of the alliance alive and well. The Americans, not so much. What is worse than being an American enemy? Being an American ally, apparently. You get talked down to, sneered at, blamed and yet you still have your soldiers dying on a foreign field at the behest of the self-same people. Hmmm.

Out of all the conservatives I know in the UK, I'm the most pro-American. And yet I am now decidedly lukewarm. As America gets more cathartic, more cartel-like, more collectivist and dominated by the titanic culture clash, it also gets more insular (if that is possible). This oil-spill has been a bit of a revelation, actually. I had assumed that the anti-British venom would come exclusively from the Democrat enviro-bigot greenies. But it hasn't. Much more has come from the right.

This despite the fact that Barack Obama has used BP as his whipping boy from day one, and on the principle that your enemies enemy is (at least for today) your friend, you might have thought that there would be some small element of sympathy and understanding for the company which provides millions of Americans with their daily gas. Nope. Only occasionally leaving aside their barrage of hate against BP to have a go at Obama and FEMA, the right have had pretty much only one organisation in their sights.

All I can say is, if Obama does destroy BP, I will never support the US again, in any forum and for any reason. BP is Britains last great company, and taking it away would remove about ten percent of our economy. If being an ally to the US means that in the middle of two wars fought at their request they are happy to destroy the crown jewel of our countries business, forget being a US ally. Not worth it.

China, Russia and India don't bother with American alliances. Why should Britain? The aforementioned get on with serving the interests of their citizens alone. It must be getting on for time for Britain to do the same.

I can put up with being sneered at, denigrated and lied about. But remember this: even the new Russia only ripped off BP for £4.5 billion. We would be much better off allied them, apparently...

Social Justice and Taxation

2010-06-25T10:12:00.002+01:00

http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2010/06/injustice-of-social-justice.html

I don't usually quote from the comments, but this was just too good:

'JG said...

I've always thought that "social justice" means ...

... let the people who work and earn something keep what they work and earn. If I plant vegetables behind my house, and do all the work of planting, tending and harvesting, then you should probably just leave me alone.

The current paradigm is that you have to give a third or a half of your work up to people who just sit on their ass waiting for you to plant the vegetables.

So the income tax kind of sucks.

A further extension of my philosophy ... that you keep what you earn ... becomes very problematic for people, even on this Web site.

If you HAVE TO tax, take it away from people who have not earned the money.

There are tons of examples and tons of specific people.

Examples: Spouses of billionaires who become billionaires themselves without doing the work that led to the billions. Tax them before me.

Children and heirs of billionaires who become billionaires themselves without doing the work that led to the billions. Tax them before me.

Pretty much anyone who gets money without work. Tax them before me.

A consumption tax to replace the income tax would be more than cool. I earn money but don't spend a whole lot. I am taxed up the wazoo.

Some hooker who defrauded a rich guy by marrying him spends a whole lot and buys a whole lot of stuff, but she earns nothing. Tax HER instead of me.

Now to specifics:

Do you really think that Heather Mills deserves to be so rich vis-a-vis emergency room physicians, cancer researchers, firemen, policemen, computer scientists, veterans who were drafted into the Vietnam war and lost their legs ... and on and on.

Then quit being chivalrous and realize that life is unfair but society doesn't have to EXAGGERATE that unfairness. Take Heather's money away from her, give her a kick in the butt to boot, and give the money to several people who are WORKING but having trouble making ends meet.

Or don't tax at all.
5:47 PM, June 23, 2010'

I completely agree with this. Not only is it just, it corrects the awful incentives of our current set of taxes.

Could he BEEEEEEEEEE more condescending?

2010-06-15T17:24:00.002+01:00

'It would be comforting if a clear political diagnosis of the Tea Party movement were available — if we knew precisely what political events had inspired the fierce anger that pervades its meetings and rallies, what policy proposals its backers advocate, and, most obviously, what political ideals and values are orienting its members.'

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/the-very-angry-tea-party/?src=me&ref=general

If I read one more faux-hand-wringing piece of garbage like this, something in my brain is going to pop.

I interpret the above as 'Not only are poor white trash too stupid to delineate their ideas properly, paying attention to them would besmirch me.'

Well, pompous shit- your country is about to be taken over by the Tea Party, so you might want to listen up.

A lie repeated often enough

2010-06-14T20:32:00.002+01:00

'Outspoken Mrs Palin has launched a series of savage personal attacks on the US President.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1286223/Sarah-Palin-lines-UK-trip--visit-Lady-Thatcher--looking-buoyant-recently.html#ixzz0qrEcC7kV

Here is a fun challenge for Simon Walters. Find ONE personal attack on Obama by Sarah Palin. One. And write it up for us in the Daily Fail. Oh, and by the way, a personal attack is an attack on the person rather than the policies. Come on, fuckwit! We're waiting!!!

Is the TPA the spawn of Satan?

2010-06-14T12:25:00.005+01:00

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2009/02/taxpayers-allia.html

There is absolutely nothing wrong with defending your interests, especially if you do it in a thoughtful and considered way. The following is a defense of local government spending by Councillor Daniel Moylan, the Deputy Leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council. Is it thoughtful and considered? Let us see:

'Conservatives have tended to be sympathetic to the stated goals of the TaxPayers’ Alliance: “campaigning for lower taxes and better government”. Which Tory could be against that? But the approach taken by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, while great fun for a party accustomed to opposition, threatens both democracy and good government in Britain and is most likely to be damaging to the poor and inarticulate. It is an approach based on three salient qualities clearly seen in the Alliance’s Better Government Position Paper: these are ignorance, raucousness and nihilism – the bedrock of anarchy (and her twin sister dictatorship) throughout the ages.'

Wow. Sounds like hyperbole, but OK. Let's hear you back that up.

'The Alliance refuses, in its Position Paper, to articulate any vision of what government is for. There are positive remarks about the Admiralty in the year 1900, so we may assume that the Alliance sees a certain role for government in the defence of the nation. But beyond that, is there any reason to believe they would not attack anything more elaborate than a basic night-watchman state? There are respectable arguments in favour of a night-watchman state but one very strong and democratic argument against it: the people of Britain do not want one, a fact the Conservative Party knows very well.'

I'm not sure that one-issue public pressure groups are expected to present the public with a complete guide to how they think the country should be run, but let's go with it for now. Councillor Moylan believes a) that the TPA want a government which runs the police and the army and nothing else and b) that the British people want... something else (sadly, not defined).

'Of course, the TaxPayers’ Alliance will never put the popularity of their view of what government is for to the test, since they will never actually field any candidates at the polls to find out. This is where raucousness comes in. As with other destructive nihilists (one thinks of the thugs who sought to take control of Paris in 1967), the TaxPayers’ Alliance is good at shouting and uninterested in the views of others.'

TPA is not a political party, so that point is valid. Its views do indeed remain un-voted on. But it doesn't seem a strong point. Vast numbers of lobbying bodies exist which could be tarred with the same brush. Does that mean lobbying bodies should all become political parties? I'm thinking no. But suddenly, Councillor Moylan goes all hyperbolic. If you lobby, you are a destructive nihilist who shouts and ignores other peoples views! Or is that, if you lobby against the things I approve of, you are a destructive nihilist yadda yadda? At this point, Councillor Moylan loses. Public policy debate is abruptly terminated at the point where those you disagree with aren't just wrong, their very participation in the argument is deemed illegitimate. And really, when one thinks of the TPA, 'one thinks of the thugs who sought to take control of Paris in 1967'?. Shall we vote on that?

'And this lack of interest in democracy – listening to what people might want – is embedded in their entire policy approach. They identify certain failings in government but then proceed to blame them on a composite fantasy class called “politicians”. (This is a technique learnt from Stalin’s murderous condemnation of “kulaks” for causing the famines he was responsible for.) These wicked, self-serving, money-grubbing politicians – leave aside for now the many examples of elected politicians whom we know from personal experience to be the reverse of all these things, not least in local government – are to be replaced for most governmental functions, say the Taxpayers’ Alliance, by “managers”, people capable (like Mussolini with the trains) of getting things done. Of course the glorious thing about managers is that they are accountable to nobody, unlike the hated “politicians”, who are and who therefore might actually be listening to people. Moreover, these “managers” would probably be no good at their job, since it is a cardinal principle of the TaxPayers’ Alliance that paying anyone in government a rate appropriate to their skills is anathema: nothing drives them into a more righteous frenzy.'

Hmm. Where to start... Apparently, there is a new crime specific to public lobbying organisations: 'a lack of interest in democracy'. This is defined as 'not listening to what people might want'. It isn't a good definition, really. Who are these 'people' of whom you speak? When did you solicit their opinions, and can I see your notes?

Mr Moylan utilises a version of Godwin's Law. If you want to blacken somethings reputation to lefties, compare it with the Nazis. If you want to do the same to right wingers, compare it to Stalins regime. Doesn't work very well, sadly. Not only do the TPA in my experience rail at managers at least as much as they do politicians, moaning about politicians has been around at least since Thucydides. Not only that, there does seem to be some straightforward good sense in blaming failings in government on politicians. You know, the ones who run the government. I would also like to point out that the reason the Bolsheviks threats against the Kulaks were important was because of the Cheka, who just after the threats were made went off to murder the Kulaks. If Councillor Moylan could point me to the TPA's Cheka I'd be much obliged.

The idea that the TPA would like to see all politicians replaced by managers is extraordinarily funny. The technocratic urge is a collectivist urge. Replace incompetent politicians with demi-godlike experts has been the cry of the collectivists since Bismarks Prussia. It Soooooooooooo isn't a Classical Liberal/Libertarian/TPA thing. Sooooooooooooooo not. '[A] cardinal principle of the TaxPayers’ Alliance [is] that paying anyone in government a rate appropriate to their skills is anathema'. Good. Remuneration for government jobs ought to be based on how much money the Government has in its limited budgets, not how much some middle manager believes his CV should get him. There is no market mechanism in Government to determine what level of remuneration any particular employee should get. Pay grades are completely arbitrary. So yes, 'a rate appropriate to their skills' is a laughable fiction, and the TPA are right to castigate profligacy with OUR MONEY.

'One of their most persistent lines of attack against local government is on communications budgets. This is understandable. They cannot tolerate the notion that people might actually know what local government does for them. There is a typically sneering piece currently on their website, attacking Knowsley Borough Council for wanting to hire someone to help make Knowsley “the borough of choice”. This is described as “non-job of the week” and an example of “burning our money”. I have no idea where Knowsley is or whether its aim to be “the borough of choice” is remotely credible. But the TaxPayers’ Alliance would deny its people even ambition and hope. One may suppose that all they need in Knowsley is some underpaid “managers” selected (no doubt by the TaxPayers’ Alliance) for their unaccountable competence at telling poor people what to do.'

Councillor Moylan is obviously distressed as he writes this, and unfortunately coherence suffers as a consequence. Here is a test question: If the average council tax-payer knew exactly what PR people do, and if we could position a CCTV camera directly above a PR persons desk and watch what they do over an average week, how many council taxpayers would vote to have PR people employed on public money? Not only do most people in my experience ignore all correspondence from the council which does not involve handing over their hard-earned money, they despise the make-work bullshit which many councils indulge in. You know, stuff like 'lets make Knowsley “the borough of choice”'.

Councillor Moylan then makes one of the stupider comments I've seen recently: He contends that the TPA squashes the ambitions and hopes of the people of Knowsley by terming their councils boondoggle “non-job of the week” and an example of “burning our money”. Seriously? Some lobbying group calls into question an action of the Knowsley council, and thereby stymies the ambitions and hopes of the people of Knowsley?

In probably his most revealing snide aside, Cllr Moylan lets us in on his true standpoint- viz, 'competence at telling poor people what to do'. He is on the side of the working class in their perpetual war with the hideous middle class and the evil aristocrats. See, Council people and the grubby working class stand shoulder to shoulder against the toffs, innit. Council people know instinctively what worthless sinecures the working slobs want created. Built right in.

'There is a strong tradition of civic pride and achievement in Britain and Conservatives have been at its forefront. I personally have no doubt that the TaxPayers’ Alliance would have been amongst the opponents of the project to build sewers for London in the nineteenth century. Society, particularly urban society, is complex. A civilised society is dependent on a degree of civic co-operation, which happily has tended to be under democratic control in this country. The TaxPayers’ Alliance seeks simultaneously to crush that civic effort and to de-democratise what remains. They are dangerous people masquerading as promoters of lower taxes and better government. The Conservative Party should have nothing to do with them and will, I have no doubt, quickly disembarrass itself of any connection on coming to power.'

I'm glad Cllr Moylan appended 'personally' to the statement that the TPA would have been dead set against building the sewers of London. I imagine that virtually no one else in the country would agree with such an egregiously stupid assertion. 'The TaxPayers’ Alliance seeks simultaneously to crush that civic effort and to de-democratise what remains'. I'm sorry, you can't just launch an accusation like that and provide no evidence for it whatsoever. Especially when it is aimed at an organisation which lobbies, rather than say employing brown-shirted thugs.

While it is true that both Parish and Borough councils have often been the forum for civic pride, when the latter was at its zenith it was the efforts of local grandees which usually provided the money for beautiful parks, monuments, poor houses, hospitals, schools, paupers cottages and swimming pools among much else. But since the State grew to ever more gargantuan proportions, and filched ever greater chunks of private wealth so it could 'make Knowsley “the borough of choice”' plus a million other stupid, non-core things, privately funded 'civic pride' has all but disappeared. Where I live in North London, I know of no example of private civic benefaction more recent than the early twentieth century.

Public compulsion destroys private volunteerism. This is so obvious I can't believe there are still people willing to deny it. But Cllr Moylan does. He seems to believe that somehow, because we the public vote for Councillors, we the public support the ever-expanding public sector payroll, the stupidly high salaries paid to these new employees, and the burgeoning 'projects' created by lefty public sector drones.

I have nothing against government- parish, local council or national. But I do have a problem with government as a cancer, eating up every function and activity and strand of our national life so it can control it, regulate it and license it. What the exact set of things I require from my government and which things I want it to leave alone is debatable.

But this piece by Councillor Moylan does not advance that debate. Indeed, what it does is say is that any criticism of increasing government activity crushes civic effort and destroys democracy. What utter tosh.

Self Satirization

2010-06-07T15:25:00.002+01:00

'In Maryland, where Mr. Kratovil endured considerable heckling last year over the health care legislation, which he ultimately opposed, he did not hold any large gatherings with voters. After returning from a visit to Afghanistan, he held two events with veterans before arriving at an evening discussion here at the credit union in Bel Air, north of Baltimore.

“It’s dramatically different this break than it was in August of last year,” Mr. Kratovil said in an interview after he finished speaking about financial regulatory legislation. “At town halls, there was a group of people who were there to disrupt, purely politically driven, not there because they wanted to get answers or discuss the issues.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/us/politics/07townhall.html?hp [Hat-Tip: Instapundit]

Worthy of the "We can't have fighting in here. This is the War Room" Award. Fancy turning up to a political meeting and wanting to discuss politics! The cheek!

Where did all those First Amendment fanatics go?

2010-06-07T10:15:00.003+01:00

'Veteran White House Correspondent Helen Thomas has provoked a storm in the US after saying the Jews must "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Germany or Poland.'

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3899361,00.html

Fair enough. It's a view. A pretty unpopular one outside of Neo-Naziism, but what the heck. We on the right are all about free speech. Aren't we? ... apparently not.

'Why Shouldn’t Helen Thomas Be Expelled from the White House Press Corps?
Jennifer Rubin'

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/307371

'Are these words of apology? Where is any indication that Thomas acknowledges her moral transgression? And to whom is she “apologizing?” There is no object of this so-called apology.'

http://neoneocon.com/2010/06/06/well-at-least-helen-thomas/

'Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, issued the following statement:

Helen Thomas’s statement of regret does not go far enough. Her remarks were outrageous, offensive and inappropriate, especially since she uttered them on a day the White House had set aside to celebrate the extraordinary accomplishments of American Jews during Jewish America Heritage Month.'

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/307781

I am a long-standing, extremely robust defender of Israel and its right to exist, defend itself, and protect its interests. But I don't think that that view should be enforced on other people. I don't think having the opposing view should get someone fired from their job. I can't imagine a conservative supporting either of those two things. Yet apparently, loads of 'conservatives' do.

Things may be considerably worse than I thought. The right to have your own opinions and not be punished for holding them is absolutely fundamental to a free society. Yet many so-called conservatives don't seem to agree. Very sad days indeed.

Great news for Al Qaeda

2010-06-04T20:10:00.002+01:00

We are living in a country supposedly on hair-trigger alert for terrorists and acts of terrorism.

So a man with two guns goes off on his own three and a half hour terrorism spree, and the cops do what?

'The police chief said that his force had deployed 42 trained firearms officers in the hunt for Bird — all those on duty in the county that day — as well as additional armed officers from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary at Sellafield, near which Bird shot several of his victims. Police and RAF helicopters were drafted in for a “massive land and air search”.'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article7144343.ece

And the upshot of all this massive activity? Nothing. No policeman challenged Birdie, as he was affectionately known. Well, as he was known before he murdered twelve people.

What a disastrously incompentent shambles. Yoo hoo, Al Qaeda! Fancy a gun-totin rampage? Britain is open, wide wide open, for whatever you have in mind. Contradict me if I'm wrong, but isn't Sellafield one of our most sensitive nuclear sites? And two of the shootings happened just outside.

I am very close to speechless. Our defences are a mirage, smoke and mirrors. Dad's Army had more organisation and effectiveness.

God protect Britain. That is our only hope.

Gaza Blockade Breakers declare their IQ's

2010-06-02T17:05:00.001+01:00

I knew it was low, but...

Where the **** have you been?

2010-05-29T01:08:00.002+01:00

'The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704269204575270950789108846.html

During the 2008 election, I studied Barack Obama, as did most other sane individuals. I tried to suss out what kind of man he was. And what struck me, as someone who has lived as a foreigner in the United States, was that Obama was a foreigner. During my stay in the US, I often bumped into things in American life which were obviously deeply meaningful to those around me, but which to me seemed like nothing. As a consequence of my bad form, it was not hard for me to get a good feel for just how profoundly Americans value themselves, their culture and their folkways. For all his basketball playing and burger eating (has anybody got any Grey Poupon?) Obama is not really American. Being American is much more than a birth certificate or a passport.

It is one of the reasons I don't live there. Americans don't tend to like people who are not 'with the program', and I am just too ornery, contrary and sceptical to sign up to Americanhood. Therefore, I have a unique insight into the special situation Obama is in. He is, in my view, less than half American. I don't mean biologically. I mean in the sense of all the strands of thought, feeling, belief, association, belonging and sympathy which go to make up a persons rightness in a particular land, among a particular people.

Where would Obama rightfully fit? Perhaps nowhere. Certainly not Indonesia, certainly not Kenya. But not really America either.

And that is becoming a big problem. In the crazy busy job of President, instinct becomes the best friend of efficiency. Instinct informs you what is important, and what is trivial- what really requires your attention, and what can be left to underlings. But Obamas instincts are terrible. His instincts about what is important are totally out of sync with the nation. So, back to Peggy...

What I don't understand is this: I am no genius. Ask my wife. So how was I able to figure out what Obama was, and what he was like in mid-2008, but it has taken 75% of Americans until about yesterday to do so?

The absence of any discernable Character or Principles

2010-05-24T16:31:00.002+01:00

'I detect an ideological similarity, too — these leaders aren’t political zealots. They might, like me, opt for a pick’n’mix belief system to suit the purpose and the practicalities of the day. And they don’t do God — not because it would be divisive in PR terms, as it was for Tony Blair, but because they just don’t (other than for weddings, christenings, funerals and to shoehorn their kids into the best local state schools).'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7132346.ece

These are the people marxian mass education turns out. They don't think they have religion or ideology- but they are extremely heavily laden with both.

Eco fanaticism: religion

Despising Christianity: ideology

Despising money: ideology

Regarding the concrete knowledge of politics as unnecessary and suspect: ideology

Proletarian uniformity: ideology

Ahistoricality: ideology

Regarding personal ambition as criminal: ideology

What a banal, dismal Godless mass of idiots. What a dreary puritanical funless horde of drabs. Yeeuuuuuuuchhhhhhhhhhh!

I'm not opposed to Draw Mohammed Day

2010-05-20T15:17:00.005+01:00

'I’M OPPOSED TO “DRAW MOHAMMED DAY.”'

'I'm glad to see Taranto do what I was challenging my commenters to do. (I said: "If you don't think the 'Piss Christ' or the American flag hypos are sufficiently on point, then make a better hypo. That's my challenge. Make a hypo that is the same but without the Muslim element, and seriously test your thinking on the subject.")'

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/04/our-reflexive-response-to-everybody.html

This is an interesting controversy. Here is a summary of my knowledge of the relevant facts:

Certain more conservative schools of Islamic thought, esp the Wahhabists, believe that any likeness of anyone, even Mohammed, can be considered an idol. Some schools of Islamic thought aren't bothered, and in many places where Moslems live there have always been likenesses of Mohammed, just like there are millions of likenesses of Jesus in the Christian world. These likenesses are expressly not to be worshipped, as that would make them idols, and therefore against the express command of God. But apart from that, they are ok.

So, forcing Moslems of a conservative persuasion to create likenesses of Mohammed would certainly be rude and unpleasant, by any reasonable standard. But given that many Moslems make likenesses of Mohammed themselves, presumably those Moslems would have no problem with non-Moslems making respectful representations of Mohammed. And if they did have a problem with it, it would be unreasonable and hypocritical.

Let us now consider the Mohammed cartoons from Jyllands Posten. Most of them were perfectly harmless, gentle representations of a man in Arabic garb. A few were intentionally insulting, and a very few were gravely insulting. The ones which were respectful would presumably cause no concern to the many millions of Moslems who have no issue with pictorial representations of Mohammed in general. The insulting ones would certainly provoke anger amongst any Moslems.

But the response to the Jyllands Posten cartoons was not organic. If ordinary Moslems outside Denmark noticed the cartoons, they didn't seem to mind them. The crazed response was ginned up after a concerted campaign by hard-core Danish Wahhabist imams who toured the Middle East and Egypt showing the cartoons to people, and posted links to them on Islamist websites. They conducted this campaign to further their religio/political agenda, which is the expansion of Wahhabist Islam and its eventual domination of the earth.

According to the Ann Althouse view, then, being polite and not 'hurting the feelings' of conservatively-minded Moslems trumps our history of robust oppositional religious and political debate. I must respect your sacred cows, no matter how stupid I believe them to be, and no matter how much they conflict with my own beliefs.

You can tell from the differing views about the pictorial representation of Mohammed among the worldwide population of Moslems that there is no clear-cut black-and-white prohibition of it in the historical Islamic body of learning. And yet, on the authority of the Wahhabist conservatives, Ann Althouse doesn't just want the Wahhabist/conservative view enforced on believers in Islam but on non-believers too.

That isn't being nice- that is alienating yourself from your own world view so far that you don't really have one anymore. It also exalts your own importance to millions of unknown and probably unknowable Moslems in countries you hardly know the name of.

It may be that a large-scale campaign to demonstrate how little respect many people feel for Moslem shibboleths will provoke some thought among the 1.3 billion Moslems on the planet why their religion is getting such a shellacing, and why normal, sane people hold it in such low regard.

Islam is getting a very bad name because of Wahhabist/Salafist violence, bullying and blackmail. This is not an issue for us. Islam needs to clean house, and disassociate itself from the people who are blackening its reputation. If Moslems don't do that, we can all assume what many believe already- which is that most Moslems secretly agree with the agenda of the Wahhabist/Salafists, but find it inconvenient to say so publicly. Whether people like Ann Althouse like it or not, that is the rule of public engagement. If it were the Republican Party, rather the Moslems of the World, who had a militant wing chopping off heads, blowing up Markets with bombs strapped to twelve-year-old girls and driving trucks of chemicals into villages and blowing them up, what would you be saying to Republicans? Would your politeness, and your generosity of spirit extend to them?

Whether we like it or not, guilt-by-association exists. If it doesn't, explain to me why the Turkish government still deny the ethnic cleansing/holocaust of Christian Armenians in 1915/16?

NEW EXTRA BIT

'If you were really a conservative, you would think where there is a problem and the only solution so far is a bad one that the right answer is first, do no harm. The default is nothing. (The Party of NO!)

There's a problem, so we must do something, and here we have something, so we must do it. That's the reasoning I have heard over and over from President Obama, and it is something I truly loathe.

Do you defend it?' (Ann Althouse in the comments of the same blog post).

That depends if you believe that Everybody Draw Mohammed is a bad 'solution'. I don't believe it is a solution at all. A solution would stop the Wahhabist war on modernity and everthing in the world which isn't Wahhabism. It is a declaration of intent, like the nailing of the Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Wittenberg Church. We intend to not be browbeaten into modifying our lives every time Wahhabists threaten murder, mayhem and boycotts. And as such, the Everybody Draw Mohammed idea works as well as anything I've heard of.

Shouldn't that be 'When the Euro fails...'?

2010-05-20T10:39:00.002+01:00

'Ms Merkel believes that the EU should have stronger powers to organise the “orderly insolvency” of countries such as Greece that set giveaway budgets with no means of paying for them. After announcing a ban on speculative share trading in Germany’s top financial institutions and the bonds of eurozone countries until next March, she warned: “This challenge is existential and we have to rise to it. The euro is in danger. If we don’t deal with this danger, then the consequences for us in Europe are incalculable . . . If the euro fails, then Europe fails.”'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7131340.ece

Quite funny really. I said this here, and mentioned the same thought to a number of people, who all scoffed and pooh-poohed the idea that that things were this serious. Well, news flash to those people who haven't been paying attention- not only is the Greek Problem extremely serious for the Euro, and by extension the EU, if the Germans stop playing this particular game, there is no game.

Without German, French and British participation, the EU would simply be another transnational talking shop, of which the world has untold numbers already. German productivity is about half of what makes the EU viable. If the Germans decide that playing sugar daddy to lazy socialists from Lisbon to Lodz is not the future they really want for themselves, the game is well and truly up.

"...If the Euro fails, then Europe fails". True, if you mean by Europe the great socialist European project strapped to the relatively unwilling European peoples for the last sixty five years. How many would mourn its passing? The EU is increasingly seen by Europeans as one of those terrible cranky old nineteen fifties ideas which has bizarrely managed to maintain a zombie existence into the twenty first century. How many would be happy with a free trade zone, and in every other way run their own affairs?

That is the question the European elites dare not ask.

Britain is a Stalinist State, says Noam Chomsky

2010-05-19T16:59:00.002+01:00

'Chomsky Calls Israeli Government ‘Stalinist’ for Refusing Him Entry'

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/chomsky-calls-israeli-government-stalinist-for-refusing-him-entry/

Well, ok, he didn't call Britain a stalinist state, but someone should have. Just last year, Britain denied the Dutch MP Geert Wilders entry to Britain because it didn't like the things he said. And I don't remember plangent cries of grief from the left over it. But then consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Apart from when the left want to make a point about western hypocrisy. And then consistency is VERY VERY important.

Me and My MP

2010-05-12T13:00:00.002+01:00

This is the person I voted for. Through bitter tears...

News just in: Most people not very interested in politics

2010-05-12T11:56:00.004+01:00

'With party leaders hammering out a coalition deal, Westminster was abuzz. But outside the bubble, did the rest of the country share the political class' fascination?'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8677038.stm

What motivates articles like this? The 'Woe is me' language, the constant seeking out of evidence (very scant if this article is anything to go by) to support the a priori beliefs of the author, the inability to process any information which might contradict the a priori beliefs- these are all so horribly familiar.

Why didn't the author mention that turnout in the last two elections has risen, from 59.4% in 2001 to 65.1% this time? OK, it isn't the 77.7% of electors who showed up in 1992... but its better than a poke in the eye. While I do meet people all the time who parrot the cliches about how all the politicians are as bad as each other, and they are all corrupt, the statistics say that almost two thirds of electors do think it is worth voting.

This evidence is proffered of 'a community to whom [the countries leaders] appeared utterly alien':

'In The Oddfellows pub, lunchtime drinkers muttered into their pints about the mediocre form of Watford FC, not the relative merits of a "progressive alliance" versus a Conservative-Lib Dem pact.

Along the Victorian and Edwardian residential streets surrounding the town centre, the only leaflets being delivered were for a local pizza restaurant.

The Conservatives had an office at the far end of Watford's High Street. But otherwise, in a town so recently bombarded with election propaganda, the sudden absence of party colours adorning windows and lamp-posts was strangely unsettling.'

It really is the most shoddy argumentation. If the point being made is that the Westminster elites are irretrievably alienated from the hoi polloi, the evidence given here doesn't remotely prove it.

Are people who are interested in politics a small minority? Yes. Does that matter? No. Is it any different in 2010 than it was in 1910 or 1810? Almost certainly not. What matters is that those with knowledge and power do the right things, and govern the country well. The punters in Watford will appreciate that.

How's that multi-culturism thing working out for you?

2010-05-12T10:41:00.001+01:00

Actually, multi-culturism is probably ok as long as none of them are muslim...

Be afraid, very afraid

2010-05-10T13:00:00.003+01:00

'Concern that European leaders will need to bail out more countries than just Greece flared from New York to Sydney last week, prompting investors to shun all but gold, dollars, yen and the safest government securities. Led by Italy’s $126 billion, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy have a total of $215 billion of debt coming due in the next three months, according to JPMorgan.

‘‘When we’re told something’s contained, it almost never is,” said Brian Yelvington, head of fixed-income strategy at broker-dealer Knight Libertas LLC in Greenwich, Connecticut. “There were a lot of people who didn’t realize how fully interrelated and large this is.”'
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aP2k8sq2WiRU

Living a plush lifestyle as one of Europes pampered millions? Think the gravy train runs on into infinity? There is a brick wall approaching, whether you like it or not.

No, Virginia, there is no Jack Bauer

2010-05-09T14:26:00.002+01:00

'Despite governing a city that had a vast hole blown into it by Islamic terrorists, Mayor Michael Bloomberg could hardly imagine Muslim extremists targeting innocents in the “crossroads of the world.” Not when there are more congenial would-be mass murderers. On CBS News, Bloomberg speculated that the plotter would be “homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health-care bill or something.”

Bloomberg must be watching too many TV shows and movies, where writers always strain to create terrorist threats that have nothing to do with Muslims. But even they haven’t yet come up with a plotline involving terrorists convinced that the individual mandate is unconstitutional and that the Congressional Budget Office score of the health-care bill is too rosy.

Usually, the government is in the position of knocking down irrational conspiracy theories; it has never quite convinced everyone that the Kennedy assassination was the work of a lone gunman. But here is an active global conspiracy, and it’s the government that irrationally wants to see a series of lone gunmen. The Pakistani Taliban must have been frustrated in the initial days after the attempt, when so few in the U.S. government would believe that, yes, it might send someone to bomb Times Square.'

http://article.nationalreview.com/433668/the-lone-wolf-pack/rich-lowry

Not only is there no real-life Jack Bauer who, in spite of being shackled by idiot bureacrats and half-wit ACLU lawyers, saves the day; there exists a learning curve gradually reaching genuine threat levels. When the Taliban started using IED's about three years ago, they were pretty hopeless. They are now extremely accomplished. Ask any squaddie who has done a tour in Afghanistan lately. Americas home-grown terrorists are climbing the same learning curve right now.

Apparently, Napolitano and Holder have got everything crossed hoping that something or other will crop up and save the US from successful jihadi terrorism. Nice one, guys! Way to stay on top of the situation. I'm sure their response would be that some people must be sacrificed so that America can hold its head high in the world, and be consistent with its own nicey-nicey no-torture happy-clappy principles. I want Janet Napolitano to say that while looking the mother of some poor kid blown up or minced in some terrorist atrocity in the eye.

This is not a TV show. This is not some fiction where somehow in the 24th episode everything gets resolved nicely, and Jack takes a well-earned vacation. Young, determined men will come along who are technically accomplished, who are utterly dedicated, and then we won't be laughing about silly, inept terrorists any more.

And here is my prediction. The anger and the desire for revenge, stoked up by 9/11, will pour out the next time there is a big successful attack on the U.S. You will NOT want to get in the way of that, let me assure you.

Why you should think long and hard before you let twenty million Mexicans into your country

2010-05-09T11:25:00.002+01:00

'About 85 mostly Hispanic students staged a noon protest march through Morgan Hill on Thursday, one day after five students at Live Oak High School were sent home after showing up in clothing with American flags on Cinco de Mayo.

The protesters supported the school's decision, while the parents of the students sent home blasted it and the school district's superintendent called the entire incident "extremely unfortunate."...

"While campus safety is our primary concern and administrators made decisions yesterday in an attempt to ensure campus safety, students should not and will not be disciplined for wearing patriotic clothing," Smith said.

Kathleen Sullivan, a school board trustee, said Live Oak experienced problems on Cinco de Mayo last year. She said some students had complained to the principal and vice principal that they had felt intimidated by students waving American flags.

In response to those complaints, school officials had asked students not to provoke other students by wearing or waving flags this year, Sullivan said.

"The district's position is that that is not in our policy," Sullivan said. "But the underlying reason for it was student safety."'

http://cbs5.com/education/rally.american.flag.2.1680060.html

Let us imagine a time in the future when the United States goes to war with Mexico. Neighbor countries often go to war, much more often than countries who are not neighbors, so it is not beyond the realms of possibility. Who would the Mexican immigrants fight for? How many of them would be a fifth column for the Mexican forces?

As usual, the left sees no danger. They never see danger as long as the situation can be manipulated to help the cause of the left. Which in this case it most decidedly can. Mexican immigrants now vote overwhelmingly Democrat. That is why they don't want a border fence. And why in a fight between patriotic Americans and very unpatriotic immigrants, they will support the latter.

Very dangerous dynamics are being created. But those who create these dynamics will never accept responsibility for it.

Beautiful, just Beautiful

2010-05-06T10:32:00.002+01:00

'"I've got it!" he shouted, foaming at the lips with enthusiasm. "Quickly, Holder, what group of deranged conspirators now constitutes the greatest potential threat to the republic?"

"I believe you are alluding to the anarchists of the Tea Party," I said.

"Precisely, Holder!" he shouted, amorously embracing a rubbish bin. "Look at the facts all around -- they square only with one conclusion -- that this was the handiwork of Tory extremists, driven to blind violent rage by His Majesty's Heath Care Reform Act. I would wager my last farthing on it!"

"By Jove, you're right Holmes!" I replied, finally catching on to his brilliant syllogism. "The proverbial dogs who did not bark. It's all right there in the report of Lady Napolitano."

"Lady Napolitano?" Holmes asked, momentarily stunned.'

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451eb3469e20133ed3d21a1970b

Remember, folks, only IowaHawk can guaruntee you at least three, often many more, belly-laughs per satire.

Now, if the subjects of these satires were only educated enough to understand them...

Are the Greeks the least self-aware people on the planet?

2010-05-05T13:53:00.002+01:00

'Chancellor Angela Merkel urged MPs to back the emergency loan package agreed by European finance ministers at the weekend.

It requires Germany to pay the largest proportion of the loans.

"Quite simply, Europe's future is at stake," she said.

The EU has agreed to provide 80bn euros (£69bn) in funding - of which around 22bn euros would come from Germany - while the rest will come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8661385.stm

Really? Europe's future is at stake? No it isn't. The future of the Euro, and by extension the EU are at stake. The Euro always had feet of clay. Many bankers and economists privately expressed the opinion that should the Eurozone come under significant pressure, the inherent weaknesses would make it quite likely to fail. The small socialist countries (and not so small Spain) would inevitably put pressure on the large capitalist countries to allow them to run with much higher public debt and deficits than the Euro rules allow.

I just watched coverage of the riots in Athens, where three people have been murdered in a bank, by people calling them pigs and thieves. Here is the essence of the situation- Communists who believe that by threat of violence they can force the few remaining capitalists to continue funding their non-productive existences through government salaries and pensions. Of course, because they are idiots, they don't realise that it isn't Greek bankers and capitalists (of which there are vanishingly few) who are funding their cushy jobs, but German ones. German bankers and capitalists who are completely immune from fear of rioting in the streets of Athens.

Indeed, it probably brings to some of their minds Baader-Mienhof and Red Army Faction. One hilarious comment from some Greek pundit said the Germans had to pay because of World War II. Wasn't that seventy years ago? Most working Germans are at the least grandchildren of the Germans of that war. They should pay for the grandchildren of the Greeks of the 1940's why?

Listening to the clapped-out bollocks being passionately spouted by the lefty morons of Greece took me right back to 1979. All the same conspiracy theories, desperately incoherent economics and patent absurdities. It is like listening to the village idiot pontificating on international affairs. The lefty hate-object this time: the IMF. Which is quite funny really. Greece can opt not to take IMF money if it wants. There is no law that says it must.

So, will the responsible adults of Germany and France bail out the petulant, deranged children of Greece? I hope not. They are spoiled brats already, and giving them more allowance is only going to make that worse.

The German conspiracy to make Greece ruin itself

2010-04-29T09:46:00.003+01:00

'In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Mr Papantoniou blamed Germany for holding up a deal, saying "forces within German politics" were seeking to push Greece out of the single currency.

He called the current economic situation in Greece "very dangerous", and blamed Europe's slow response to the crisis so far for "sending confused signals to the market".

"We have lost a lot of time," he said. "The reputation of the eurozone has been hurt [and] the stability of the euro has been impaired.

"But even at this late stage it is important for the eurozone to show its determination and effectiveness in dealing [with the crisis].'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10090363.stm

Pub quiz question: who are the worlds worst diplomats, the Russians or the Greeks?

Time and again during the Greek fiscal collapse, the Greeks have managed to blame the people who won't lend them money for the crisis. I'm not sure if it is a function of the Greek national psyche, or yet another retrograde result of being thoroughly imbued with Marxist claptrap. But whatever its root, the Greeks are virtually guarunteeing that even the Germans and Frenchmen who were predisposed to lending Greece the forty five billion euros it is asking for are now having second thoughts.

Forces 'within German politics' are seeking to kick Greece out of the Euro? That is unbelievably cheeky. Giving enormous numbers of Greeks cushy government jobs and plush pensions has nothing to do with Greeces plight, apparently. It is simply the victim of a German conspiracy.

You might want to read 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' again, Mr Papantoniou.

What do we 'do' about conspiracy theories?

2010-04-27T14:01:00.004+01:00

'Governments do sometimes lie, and the "official theories" often turn out to be wrong. So where do we draw the line between healthy critical oversight and corrosive conspiracism?'

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/26/skeptics_of_the_world_unite?page=0,0

Interesting ommission from this article: Anthropogenic Global Warming. For many people with a good high school or first degree level of education, AGW sounded bogus from the very first. The idea that within a few years of first having the possibility of studying the global climate we would identify a man-made apocalypse-in-the-making seemed both highly unlikely, and just too convenient given the policy prescriptions required by the theory. The fact that these policy prescriptions were identical to prior policy prescriptions of 1970's enviro/lefties didn't seem coincidental at all.

And once ClimateGate broke, and the modus operandi of the AGW cabals became public knowledge, public trust in AGW was demolished. It turned out that the conspiracy theorists weren't the Global Warming Deniers but the AGW propagators in the universities, research labs and NASA. And interestingly, genuine scepticism, supposedly the bedrock of science, was shown to be almost entirely absent from the AGW cabals.

And yet... it doesn’t warrant a mention here.

Let us for a moment consider the wider view. In the contest between utopian idealism and materialist empiricism, the former seems to be winning. There 'ought' to be AGW, so that the socialist utopia can be brought into being. And if the evidence can't be found, it must be manufactured.

I believe utopian idealism, especially that implacable enemy of classical liberalism, progressivism, is bound inextricably to conspiracy theories like the Jewish Plot for World Domination, and the 9/11 Plot to Blacken Islam and Steal the Oil.

Because utopian fantasies are impossible to bring about on earth, there must be some deep underlying conspiracy (or conspiracies) to cause their failure; the alternative, that utopian fantasies are self-defeating and fail because the world obeys its own internal logic without regard to the wishes of utopians is just too hard to bear.

That is why utopian idealists like Obama switch with blinding speed to enraged conspiracists- because it just can't be true that with no help from the International Jewish Plot or The Rage Filled Tea Partyers or the Glenn Beck Fascists or the Rush Limbaugh Nazis America is spurning his New New Deal.

The lefties take on America at the moment, and I would include the article quoted above, is confused. And that is because their premises are so, so wrong.

Premise number one: Nazis are a right-wing phenomenon.

Premise number two: Rallies by white people against a black president are inherently racist, and can't have anything to do with public policy

Premise number three: Not only are Progressive economics the only true economics, the evidence from the twentieth century supports that

Premise number four: Most conspiracy theory kooks are on the right

Premise number five: Our consipiracy theories are healthy scepticism, your conspiracy theories are deranged kookiness

Everywhere recently-scalded idealist utopians are found, conspiracies abound. I'm not sure why, but the name Charles Johnson suddenly sprang to mind.

One very large constituency seems to be permanently uninterested in, and unpersuaded by conspiracy theories- classical liberals. The messy, disorganised, often random world observed by classical liberals militates strongly against conspiracy in favour of chance. Classical liberals understand that there are conspiracies, occasionally, but because of the aforementioned character of the world (messy, disorganised, random) they mostly backfire, or fail, or are pyrrhic. Lets take the CIA assassination of the Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1953. How well did that work out? Yeeeeeeessssssssssssss. Let's take another example- the assassination of Hafizullah Amin, Afghan President by the Soviets in 1979. That turned out well. Or the British assassination of Rasputin in 1916. I could go on.

But the point is obvious. Mostly, when conspiracies do occur, their outcomes are abysmal and very often militate directly against the ends desired. So don't bother.

Conspiracy theories are not just about ignorance. Many ignorant societies exist without discernable conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are about frustration and disappointment, of a heavy feeling of having been denied; of having the good stuff withheld.

Is regular history boring to you? Do you feel that out there somewhere the historians and past-merchants are keeping the real stories about how the world works to themselves, and laughing at you? Same with the scientists who have the keys to the cupboards where the alien bodies are sitting? Same with the politicians who take all the big decisions in the back of their Rolls Royces, while you vote for nothing like a schmuck? Or the Republican oligarchs who keep all the money between themselves, and never let a poor guy have a break?

Conspiracy theories can fix that fer ya! In a second, there you are, in the know, sitting at the big boys table. Important because you are a Truth Bearer. You hold the sacred chalice of REAL KNOWLEDGE. A schmuck no more.

Are conspiracy theorists dangerous? Occasionally. Timothy McVeigh comes to mind. Are they dangerous to democracy? Only when progressivism dominates. Then they absolutely are, as the Nazis demonstrate most effectively. In a country demographically and electorally dominated by classical liberals, no.

Britain, America, Australia and New Zealand have been dominated through most of their history by classical liberalism, and it shows by their unmatched success on the world stage. Living in the real world, messy and random and disorganised though it might be, has huge payoffs.

Britains decline is in perfect correlation with its abandonment of classical liberalism in favour of utopian idealism and collectivism. To the extent that the other three have done so, decline has been evident.

Freedom is messy, disorganised, random- and spectacularly fruitful. Utopian idealism has a fantastic brochure and millions upon millions of PR agents, but when you get there it seems awfully like a stuffy depressing poverty-stricken dictatorship. But that doesn't stop people from dreaming- and ignoring all the evidence from around them.

I still think there is no gain from engaging with conspiracy theorists. Utopean idealists are psychologically incapable of realistically judging evidence. Have you read Paul Krugman? You are far better off trying to guaranteeing the presence of at least some classical liberals in the next generation, and ignoring utopean idealists completely.

Dead heat in the polls

2010-04-27T13:04:00.004+01:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7511352/Poll-Tracker-UK-General-Election-2010-Opinion-Poll-Tracker.html

As of five past one on the 27th of April, the polls had:

Conservatives - 33%
LibDems - 30%
Labour - 27%
Other - 10%

Which is a statistical dead heat as far as I'm concerned.

Usually, I'd have a take on these numbers, but I just don't. Cameron is doing all the things everybody said he should do- he has a Green halo, he talks constantly about inclusiveness, he has replaced all the cantankerous old Englishmen with young ethnic girls, he has tacked his colours to the great hulk of the NHS, he has praised the hard work and devotion of public workers (stop giggling at the back), and done everything in his power apart from a public exorcism to get rid of the legacy of Margaret Thatcher and 1980's Conservatism.

And yet... he is only a couple of nosehairs in front of the callow youth Clegg.

You could make the argument that if the Conservatives are exactly like the LibDems, why bother voting Conservative? After all, the LibDems have been like the LibDems for much longer, and at least have the (dubious) benefit of consistency. Ok, their policies are risible, but then what of the Conservatives constantly humping the leg of the enormous public sector? I thought Conservatives at least sort of wanted fewer public workers, and more private ones? I thought Conservatives at least sort of didn't like state ownership of the means of production? What happened? Did somebody change the definitions of classical liberalism quietly on the side?

I think there is a distinct possibility that Cameron, like the Generals are alleged to do, is fighting the previous war. And getting this one completely wrong. My sense, admittedly based on tiny amounts of anecdotal information, is that there is a brand new hunger in the country for a bit of hard-edged genuine Conservatism. Caused, I believe by the gentle drift of New Labour towards Old Labour destinations, like allowing enormous numbers of foreigners into the country and bulking up the public sector workforce like a himbo on steroids and ratcheting up the anti-wealth-creator rhetoric and policy.

A vague collective sense of where Old Labour took us last time, to bankruptcy, riots in the streets and open class warfare- has arisen like some ghostly wraith. And there is definitely a whiff of Stalinism to Gordon Browns clunking bullying. Enough to remind people of those mini-Stalins of the TUC.

But Cameron is a chameleon whose current colouration is determined by his usual environment- Notting Hill- where pretty much everybody is solidly green, hates real Conservatives, has no solid link to the economy and thinks the EU is just spiffly-wiffly. Seen from Notting Hill, there is no attaction whatsoever in the old Thatcherite Conservative Party policies or styling. The multi-culti soft left cultural takeover is complete. But, well, then there is the rest of Britain, which is mostly not Notting Hill. Where people are still keen to get rich, drive a V-8, build a swanky mini-palace and use as many of Mother Earths resources as possible.

Cameron is no champion of the potential wealth creator. In fact, there is nobody to vote for in this election who is a champion of the potential wealth creator. So I guess thirty-all is about right.

So last year

2010-04-27T12:35:00.003+01:00

'Young voters were enthusaistic about voting for President Obama in 2008, but a new Gallup survey finds that excitement for heading to the polls may have dissipated this year. That hasn't gone unnoticed at the Democratic National Committee and Obama's Organizing for America, which e-mailed a video of Obama spelling out the importance of the midterm elections.

"Today, the health insurance companies, the Wall Street banks, and the special interests who have ruled Washington for too long are already focused on November's congressional elections," Obama says in the video. "So this year I need your help once more. ... It will be up to each of you to make sure the young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again."'

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/politics_nation/2010/04/young_voters_essential_for_democrats.html

Have you noticed something about teen crazes? They last maybe six months, but with an inexorable power akin to glaciers travelling downhill, they move on. And once they've moved on, no power in the universe can make them go back.

Apparently, the Obama administration functionaries are the last people in the world to realize this. Ever since Obama stopped being the dazzling, cool black guy who was going up against The Man and The Woman and became just another government employee, his star appeal has been on the wain. And you can ask for it back, but talk to any poptastic songstress from three years ago how far that'll get you.

Sorry, dude, you are just so last year.

Brave, brave Molly Norris she bravely ran away away...

2010-04-26T18:29:00.005+01:00

'In declaring May 20th to be "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day," Seattle artist Molly Norris created a poster-like cartoon showing many objects -- from a cup of coffee to a box of pasta to a tomato -- all claiming to be the likeness of Muhammad...

On Friday, Norris told a radio talk show host in Seattle that she came up with the idea because "as a cartoonist, I just felt so much passion about what had happened..." noting that "it's a cartoonist's job to be non-PC."...

...Her stark website today reads: ""I am NOT involved in "Everybody Draw Mohammd [sic] Day!"
"I made a cartoon that went viral and I am not going with it. Many other folks have used my cartoon to start sites, etc. Please go to them as I am a private person who draws stuff," she writes...

...Once it became a national story she reeled back, asking Savage -- in an email he provided to The Ticket -- if he would "be kind enough to switch out my poster" with another one -- a much tamer version which has no images attributed to Muhammad.

"I am sort of freaked out about my name/image being all over the place," her e-mail reads...

...She doesn't appear to be alone. The creator of a Facebook page dedicated to the day has bowed out as well. Jon Wellington told the Washington Post (before abandoning ship) that he created the page because he "loved [Norris's] creative approach to the whole thing -- whimsical and nonjudgmental."

While he was still associated with his own event he said: "To me, this is all about freedom of expression and tolerance of other viewpoints, so I hope you'll help make this a sandbox that anyone can play in, if they want. I don't think it'd be right under the circumstances for me (or anyone) to censor inflammatory posts *ahem*, but let's be welcoming and inclusive, mmkay?"

Apparently the posts weren't "welcoming" enough, as on Sunday morning he announced his departure from the cause. "I am aghast that so many people are posting deeply offensive pictures of the Prophet," he writes. "Y'all go ahead if that's your bag, but count me out."'

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/04/creators-of-everybody-draw-muhammad-day-abandon-effort-after-it-becomes-controversial.html

A simple, every-day tale of lefty luvvies living inside a bubble, a hazy mazy dream world where getting in peoples faces and being challenging is a good, peaceful, loving affair.

Naturally, at some point, the realization breaks in that angry young men with bushy beards will show up at some point with stabby knives and/or rusty swords, and procede to reveal these luvvies gastro-intestinal tracts in quite unhygenic ways.

And suddenly, making disgusting jokes about Jesus and Buddha seems perfectly satisfactorily 'challenging'...

Slightly missing the point

2010-04-25T12:19:00.004+01:00

'Ambinder lives is a fantasy world where left-wing commentators (including Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow) are serious policy wonks, while all conservative commentators are "entertainers shouting slogans;" where hyperbole is the exclusive refuge of the right-wing; where the vile language and defamation hurled at George Bush for eight years never existed; where the equally vile attempts by Democratic leaders to equate health care protesters to terrorists never happened.'

http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/04/has-marc-ambinder-gone-mad.html [Hat Tip: Instapundit]

Bill Jacobson was obviously pretty angry when he wrote this; and like me when I get a bit of red haze, his thinking is not all that clear.

I read the Ambinder piece, and my reaction was not 'you are projecting' and 'you are worse at this than us'. What is most striking, at least to me, is how detached Ambinder is from the actualities. I don't think Ambinder has ever watched the Tea Partys, listened to the Tea Party speeches, watched Fox news, listened to Rush Limbaugh or watched Glenn Beck. I don't suppose, apart from a few outtakes on YouTube, he's ever watched a whole speech by Sarah Palin.

To analyze anything, to have anything interesting to say about a subject, you have to pay attention to it. In the old days, say thirty years ago, most politics happened between politicians. They debated between each other, and with journalists and policy wonks. That was about it. The public did not get a voice. Policy was debated, decided and put into legislation in a very tight circle of people. And certainly much more than now, people paid attention to the points made by the other side. Very often, if the opposition made valid points, those points would immediately be stolen!

Now that the debate has broadened massively, there is a tendancy on all sides of the American political spectrum to just ignore and caricature the opposition. Perhaps it is just that there are now so many voices, so many blogs, so much news output, so many political magazines, that to try to do all of that debate justice is impossible for anyone other than people with no job and fanatical devotion.

But whatever Ambinders excuse is, his analysis of the goings-on of every part of the political spectrum other than the one he inhabits is reminiscent of a guy giving a commentary on a football match using a pair of binoculars, from near earth orbit. There are vague forms, a bit of colour here and there, but essentially he has no clue what is going on.

Ambinder:

'It is absolutely a condition of the age of the triumph of conservative personality politics, where entertainers shouting slogans are taken seriously as political actors, and where the incentive structures exist to stomp on dissent and nuance, causing experimental voices to retrench and allowing a lot of people to pretend that the world around them is not changing. The obsession with ACORN, Climategate, death panels, the militarization of rhetoric, Saul Alinsky, Chicago-style politics, that TAXPAYERS will fund the bailout of banks -- these aren't meaningful or interesting or even relevant things to focus on. (The banks will fund their own bailouts.)'

You will note that there is no mention of the Federal deficit- the single most talked about topic at Tea Partys. No mention of the nationalization of health care and the car industries. No mention of the destination of stimulus funds. No mention of the grotesque growth of the Federal Government in a way explicitly foreseen by the Founding Fathers, who wrote the Constitution to specifically prevent it. These are the core issues for 99% of legitimate Tea Party folk.

Ambinders list reads like a campaign leaflet from eighteen months ago. All that is missing is the Birther libel. It really is the most pathetic mis-characterization. The fact is, the Tea Party folk not only disagree with specific policies- they understand that the Obama/Ambinder intention is to fundamentally change the United States into something alien from what has gone on for the last 234 years.

And Ambinder thinks we should be 'grilling ... administration economic officials', 'hectoring ...Democratic leaders on the public option', 'criticis[ing] Elena Kagan', churning out 'keepin'-them-honest perspectives on health care', chit-chatting about 'detainees and Gitmo', and funniest of all, furrowing our brows over 'derivatives'. Fun and interesting though these small potatoes are, they are not the survival-of-the-Republic-in-its-constituted-form important. And every one of them has received extensive attention on Fox news, especially health care. I know that, because I watch Fox news. Not only does Marc Ambinder not watch Fox news, he almost certainly has a fastidious distaste for it worthy of a Victorian grand dame. That is the prevailing snobby view of those on the left, who believe Fox is for NASCAR watchers and people who chew Skoal.

Fine. But then don't launch into some faux analysis of it. You are going to get it wrong, and everybody who knows better will just laugh.

Spiro Agnew 2

2010-04-23T00:02:00.002+01:00

'Presidents speak to all of America and they best build consensus through argument and persuasion—not by singling out political targets, cultivating resentment, questioning motives and mocking differences of principle or political philosophy. Mr. Obama's bellicosity is no more attractive than Sarah Palin's attempts to pit "the real America" against the big-city slickers. And his rhetorical method seems especially discordant coming from a President who still insists, in between these assaults, that he is striving mightily to change the negative tone of American politics.

If the President and his advisers are wondering why his approval ratings are falling even as the economy is recovering, they might look to his own divisive conduct and the contempt he too often shows for anyone who disagrees with him.'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704448304575196121075748664.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_newsreel_opinion

From the very beginning, I had a sense that Obama was a small man. A small, vain, pompous man extremely good at camouflaging those traits. The trouble is, when Obama relaxes, like he does in front of black crowds or trade union meetings or Democrat fundraiser crowds, the mask slips. His bile, his anger and his disdain come pouring out.

Perhaps a billion articles have been written in the legacy media extolling the cool, calm, scholarly, detached Obama. And that is just Newsweek. His fanatical acolytes don't seem to notice when Obama isn't like that.

Which brings us to the nature of Obama acolytes. Judging from their blog comments, blog posts and purple-faced rants, they are full of hate and rage. I recently scanned through a compendium blog post reminding people of what went on at the 'anti-war' rallies- the disgusting lies and vitriol, the violent language and treasonous signage. Those people have not gone away. Their hatred is still just as raw. But there is no Bush now. They have to direct their rage at something else.

For them, Obama is not nearly angry enough. Despite his extreme lack of class, despite his obvious disdain for the traditions and folkways of the presidency, despite his demonisation of opponents acting in good faith, it is not enough. His acolytes want him to tear the Republicans and Tea Partyers limb from limb, take all their money, humiliate them. They want to change the country irrevocably and stand before the people of America with a big grin on their faces, laughing with triumphalist glee. You wanted your country free and rich and capitalist, and look what we did with it! We smashed it to pieces.

A couple of years ago, I watched a travelogue/history about Alexander the Great. I'd always admired Alexander... until I watched this series. When Alexander got to the capital of Persia, he burnt down the glorious temple at its heart simply because no one could stop him. When I watched this episode, I burned with anger. This is not the behaviour of a creator, of a builder, of a contributor. It is the behaviour of an ignorant despoiler, a selfish arrogant bully.

I don't believe in my heart that Barack Obama wants to build a successful, bountiful, harmonious America. There is too much hate in him. He wants success and bounty and harmony for his people, for progressives, for campus marxists, for trade union leaders, for radical agitators, for liberal lawyers and unionised teachers and public workers. But he hates the other. He hates the working white poor, and the small business owners, the bread-and-butter Americans with whom he has never spent any time and who embody for him alienation, non-acceptance and quiet hostility. He doesn't care if they rot. He will not act in their interests.

He said he would. He gave lots of speeches saying exactly that. But it was an act, a ruse. The real Barack Obama is quite seriously unpleasant. And Americans have noticed. I wouldn't put Obama quite at the level of Alexander the Great, but I don't doubt that his presidency will be used by future historians as a warning about not paying attention to presidential candidates.

Your right to shut up and pay the bill

2010-04-22T22:58:00.003+01:00

'The European Union has declared travelling a human right, and is launching a scheme to subsidize vacations with taxpayers' dollars for those too poor to afford their own trips.

Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, proposed a strategy that could cost European taxpayers hundreds of millions of euros a year, The Times of London reports.'

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/travel/news/Vacationing+human+right+chief+says/2924330/story.html

Ever have that nightmare where you are running along the train tracks, pursued by a train that you know will in just a few seconds run you down and squash you like a bug?

Just me then.

Those few remaining satirists in the world today must feel very much like my dreaming self. I mean, no matter how deranged and nutty your latest wizard bit of satire, reality quickly overtakes it, nullifying your brilliant work.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!

I remember back in the '70s when mocking the whole human rights lark was in its infancy. Many a comic did a bit about some hilarious 'right' which would be granted in the future- the right to an eight-bedroomed council house for you four wives and 16 children, or the right to porn in your prison cell.

Of course, because the whole 'rights' game is a semantic trick, there is never an endpoint to their relentlessly expanding scope. Anything which any socialist believes some 'greedy rich bastard' can be extorted to pay for becomes a 'right'. Even things which nature will not allow become 'theoretical rights'.

It's all very tiresome really. And the jokes fall flat because these people aren't kidding.

Obama: Making the tough decisions in the Class War

2010-04-22T20:38:00.003+01:00

Continuing on from the prior post:

'And then he connected this argument to the struggle over financial reform, aimed at changing "a situation where people are allowed to take wild risks and all the downsides are socialized even as the profits are privatized." Obama said that "some of the rhetoric that's coming out of the other side of the aisle" suggested that Republicans "so far, at least, don't seem to acknowledge that we're going to have to make some tough decisions and reform the system."'

Obama is just disgusting. A horrible, disgusting man.

The downsides are socialized while the profits are privatized.

Remember now, the poorest 47% of Americans pay not one single red cent of income tax. That's right, zero.

Whereas the top 10% of Americans pay 75% of all income tax.

So, a bailout of banks paid for with income taxes would be... money from rich people bailing out other rich people.

What Obama means is, the rich greedy bastards of Wall Street chucking another fifty billion down on some crazy bet, and then when it doesn't pay off, getting the working schmoes down at the dockyards to pay another fifty bucks a week each in income tax to bail them out.

Which goes down a storm in the student union and the trade union headquarters, where facts are not really considered important.

Obama calls reforming Wall Street a tough decision? Tough like eating a banana; not tough like doing a twelve hour shift down on the coal face.

But then Obamas life has always consisted of tough things like this decision about Wall Street reform. Tough tough tough. What a Trojan.

Wall Street Regulation to the rescue!

2010-04-22T19:41:00.003+01:00

'If health care legislation had to fight uphill against a public mood that is skeptical of government's capacities, the financial reform bill Democrats are pushing has the advantage of flowing with a public view devoutly critical of Wall Street, bankers and all their works.

And for the first time in Obama's presidency, Republicans are uncertain as to whether resolute opposition to a Democratic idea is in their political interest. There are strong indications that the GOP would prefer to avoid an all-out confrontation over re-regulating the financial system, and several Republican senators are saying that they would like to negotiate with Democrats on this one. Suddenly, it's Democrats -- and, in particular, the often conflict-averse Obama -- who are relishing a fight.

This raises what may be the essential question for the campaign: Can Democrats finally put the Republicans on the defensive?

Obama is betting that they can. His speech at a fundraiser for Boxer in Los Angeles on Monday offered a template for a new Happy Warrior president. After a year in which he repeatedly and almost apologetically insisted that he was -- really, really -- trying as hard as he could to work with Republicans, he turned the beat around and asked why Republicans weren't willing to work with him.'

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/22/obama_the_new_happy_warrior_105270.html

Interesting phrasing. The first time I read this, that sentance read quite definite. But on second reading, it says '[Obama] repeatedly and almost apologetically insisted that he was ... trying as hard as he could to work with Republicans'.

Not, you will note 'Obama tried hard to work with Republicans'. Of course not, that would be silly. Not only did Obama ignore all the Republican suggestions about possible reforms of health care delivery, he repeatedly and insultingly insisted that the Republicans hadn't suggested any actual reforms of health care delivery. And called opponents of his specific reforms liars and shills for big pharma.

So the phrasing of this supporter of Obama is very interesting '[Obama] repeatedly ... insisted that he was ... trying as hard as he could to work with Republicans'. He did do that a lot. He did go on TV and drone on and on about how he was trying to work with the Republicans- almost as often as he went on TV and denounced the same people as liars and obstructionists.

But nobody outside the closed bubble of Democrat lackeys and dupes bought it. I haven't seen polling figures for how many Americans consider Obama a bipartisan figure, but I bet you dollars to donuts that he would score below Tricky Dicky. Even the big government Republican RINOs couldn't get on board with Obamas proto-socialism- and that is saying something.

As for the main point of this piece of dull propaganda- that somehow smashing Wall Street over the head with a big piece of straitjacket legislation is going to win back all those disillusioned Americans- go ahead and see. I think we all know that Wall Street regulation sets as many pulses racing as Nancy Pelosi in a leotard.

"In this entire year and a half of cleaning up the mess, it's been tough because the folks very responsible for a large portion of this mess decided to stand on the sidelines," Obama declared. "It was as if somebody had driven their car into the ditch and then just watched you as you had to yank it out, and asked you, 'Why didn't you do it faster -- and why do I have that scratch on the fender?' And you want to say, why don't you put your shoulder up against that car and help to push? That's what we need, is some help."

Eye-watering. Simply eye-watering brass. If you make a list of the problems which Obama had to face on becoming president, and rank them by urgency and importance, where would 'fix Americas not-broken health care provision' be?

Most peoples list, prioritizing the most important things first, would have been something like:

1) Unemployment, how to reduce

2) the US banking sector, how not to further screw up

3) US federal debt, how to reduce

4) US dependence on foreign sources of energy

As I've said before, Obama really had very little on his plate when he became president. Iraq? Sorted by Bush. Afghanistan? Easily manageable. The Bank bailouts? Already done. The recession? They fix themselves every single time.

The idea that America was completely broken, and that Obama has spent a year fixing it is laughable. If you take my list, here is what Obama has done:

1) loaded more taxes, regulation and debt onto the already laboring US economy, thereby causing lots more unemployment

2) continuing the dismal interventionist policies of Bush via the terrible bailouts

3) passed the 'stimulus', which will hand over almost a trillion of taxpayer money to Democrat constituencies up and down America; passed a very expensive healthcare boondoggle; cut no government programs of any kind

4) done nothing whatsoever to alleviate US dependence on foreign sources of energy

Just for laughs, he introduced cap-and-trade to thrash the US coal and steel industries.

So, lets try a slightly different metaphor.

Imagine you crashed your car into a ditch. A nice, personable, sauve guy in an expensive suit stopped by. You thought he would help you get your car out of the ditch. Instead, he took everything out of the glove compartment, polished it with windex, and buffed it with a chamoix. He then wanted you to give him a standing ovation, a nobel peace prize and medal for best roadside assistance ever given.

But you kick him in the pants and tell him in short, anglo-saxon phrases how much his help was appreciated.

Hey, at least that image is better than Nancy Pelosi in a leotard.

Government and its relationship to immutable economic laws

2010-04-20T13:33:00.004+01:00

'...the political establishment continues to argue that the market needs to be prevented from delivering rough justice to sinners. President Obama, who one year ago gave us a worst-case scenario in which an unstimulated economy might hit 8 percent unemployment by this year, now presides over 10 percent unemployment but tries to bamboozle us with counterfactuals like this doozy from the 2010 State of the Union address: “If we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today.”'

http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/19/the-rise-of-decline

King Canute knew that the tide would come in, even if he commanded it not to. Our very much sub-King Canute rulers don't know this simple truth. They think they can change the laws of economics by fiat.

'...The current recession has become the economic version of The Fantasticks, a show that keeps running long after the audience wants to move on. It’s becoming increasingly clear that by not letting anything collapse, by not allowing sweet, beautiful failure to happen, the government is helping to drag out the pain. That may not be indicative of anything new, but it’s enough to make you want to bulldoze a house or two.'

This seems both fatalistic, and a bad use of anger. The crucial thing about governing nations is that innumerable lessons have been learned during the last three or four thousand years- and codified into constitutions and laws. Successful constitutions, like that of the United States, work with human nature to ensure both effective and non-tyrannical government. It is time to codify general economic rules into our constitutions.

Here are a few off the top of my head:

1) The government role in the economy is that of umpire, never participant.
2) Government shall never provide goods and services, except those which no other institution can provide.
3) No asset shall ever be deemed to be the property of the Government by default.
4) Taxes will be renamed 'Appropriated Citizens Money', just so we're clear.
5) No government employee should ever recieve higher remuneration than an equivalent worker in the private sector.
6) All government hirings go before citizen juries for scrutiny. Once the government debt ceiling goes over a specified level, no further hiring can take place.
7) Every year, the government will publish its accounts, to the standards of public companies, in a format understandable to at least 75% of the population. This must include all liabilities, including pensions and benefits provided to anyone in the public sector; plus future liabilities which are predictable.
7) Education, Training welfare and Health care are services, and can be provided by institutions other than government. Government shall have no role in the provision of these services, other than the normal umpiring of their provision.

I'm sure I can improve on these, and indeed increase them. But they'll do for now.

Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!

2010-04-19T10:23:00.003+01:00

From the Nelson Muntz school of humour:

'Mugabe urges end to violence on Zimbabwe anniversary

Mr Mugabe addressed supporters on Zimbabwe's 30th anniversary
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has called for an end to political and racial violence as the country celebrates 30 years since independence.

Speaking at a ceremony marking the anniversary, he urged Zimbabweans to "foster an environment of tolerance".'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8627813.stm

Who can't tell the difference between anti-government and anti-big-government?

2010-04-18T13:13:00.002+01:00

'For the past several years, especially since the Oklahoma City bombing, the national media have focused a lot of attention on “anti-government” extremists. Libertarians, who are critical of a great deal that government does, have unfortunately but perhaps understandably been tossed into the “anti-government” camp by many journalists.

There are two problems with this identification. The first and most obvious is that many of the so-called anti-government groups are racist or violent or both, and being identified with them verges on libel.

The second and ultimately more important problem is that libertarians are not, in any serious sense, “anti-government.” It’s understandable that journalists might refer to people who often criticize both incumbent officeholders and government programs as “anti-government,” but the term is misleading.

A government is a set of institutions through which we adjudicate our disputes, defend our rights, and provide for certain common needs. It derives its authority, at some level and in some way, from the consent of the governed.'

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/04/16/are-libertarians-anti-government/ [Hat Tip: Instapundit]

For me, this CATO editorial is just too wiffly. This is a very easy point to clarify. Libertarians don't hate government; they hate big, tyrannical government. See how easy that was?

Only idiots and anarchists believe it is possible to have civilisation without government. And libertarians are neither of the above. Lumping libertarians in with idiots and anarchists is called 'politics', and can be dealt with quite handily through the use of more 'politics'.

And the trouble for the soi-disant arbiters of normality in northern Virginia and Washington DC is that a huge chunk of Americans now associate themselves with the core of libertarianism. It is almost as if it were their birthright...

The left in American politics have always had such an unpromising future that desperate lying had to be utilised to give them even a little bit of go-forward. And give them their due, desperate lying over a hundred years has put them into pole position in US politics eventually. But the trouble with lying is if the sun comes out and reveals the lies to be lies.

'Vote Democrat and get paid much more than you should, for much poorer quality work than you do now, have your job guarunteed for life, and be protected from all external reality' has gotten them an awful long way.

But do Americans really want to live in the inevitable aftermath of that philosophy? Have Americans finally put two and two together, and associated Democrat policies with the depressing failure and terrible outcomes all around?

I think so. Many observers of the political realm have a sense of a watershed being reached; a final Rubicon being crossed; of the electorate rising as one to smite down the snake oil salesmen and their terrible tinctures.

Not because they hate government. They hate these governors, which is both highly reassuring, and terrible, terrible news if you are an incumbent, or the soiled handgoods of one.

NASA and the BBC

2010-04-14T16:18:00.003+01:00

'I’VE BEEN A DEFENDER OF OBAMA’S NEW SPACE POLICY, but Neil Armstrong thinks I’m wrong. “The first man to walk on the moon blasted President Barack Obama’s decision to cancel NASA’s back-to-the-moon program on Tuesday, saying that the move is ‘devastating’ to America’s space effort. . . . The letter was released to NBC News just two days in advance of Obama’s trip to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a space policy summit. Obama is expected to flesh out his vision for the space agency’s future during his speech at the summit. . . . Armstrong and his fellow astronauts emphasize the bigger implications, however, and say in their letter that the decision would put the nation on a ‘long downhill slide to mediocrity.”'

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/97565/

I see this debate through the prism of the BBC. The BBC is an agency of the British government with some bureaucratic paraphenalia intended to mask the fact that it is an agency of the British government.

NASA is likewise an agency of the US Federal government.

What is the impact of these enormous, publicly funded agencies?

They totally dominate their respective industries, sucking up much of the available talent, distorting the marketplace and using the deep pockets of the public to create insuperable barriers to entry for that marketplace.

I have a problem with the lefty slant of the BBC, but that is only ten percent of why I want the BBC broken up and privatised. The other ninety percent is because it does not allow the broadcasting marketplace in the UK to operate naturally. This baleful situation is made even worse by the existence of the ITV network, which was ALSO a creation of the state, and which is governend by bureacratic strictures. The BBC fills so many of the available niches for media in the UK that most of the time nobody contests them. And because of the cross-media possibilities for promotion, a private local radio station is not just going up against the local BBC radio station, it is also going up against BBC regional and national TV, print and web. So much of the time, nobody bothers to contest.

NASA does the same thing in the US for space-related industrial activity. NASA does the Shuttle, it does rocket delivery of satellites, it does manned space exploration, it does unmanned probes to the solar system and beyond, it does climate research (very badly), it does a million other things. And all on the taxpayer dime.

If NASA didn't exist at all, the commercial possibilities of space would soon drive the creation of viable replacement activity in most, perhaps all of these areas. And if no commercial outfit chose to do pure science space activity, a tiny version of NASA could be created to do simply that, and nothing else.

To me this all seems perfectly obvious and self-evident. Under Mrs Thatcher, Britain dispensed with numerous BBC-scale bureacracies, and the world didn't end. In fact, the privatisations were an amazing revelation to everybody willing to pay good attention. They have resulted in many new markets which hadn't previously had a chance to exist.

I can imagine that for the old guard like Neil Armstrong, the image of a strong, successful America is forever wedded to those enormous government agencies. Just as for many Russians the vast Soviet machine of state represented true power and prestige.

Unfortunately, they are both wrong. The laws of economics don't change from decade to decade, and vast government agencies have never been anything but vastly inefficient engines for achieving economic success. I feel for these ageing greats, and I honour their spectacular achievements, but NASA is not worth keeping just because of that sentiment.

I long for the day when Britain has a thriving, competitive broadcasting sector freed from the lowering presence of the BBC. I know that it will be much better, much more interesting, and much more useful.

And the American space industry will benefit in like kind from the disappearance of an all-powerful NASA.

Could you use any more adjectives?

2010-04-14T14:00:00.005+01:00

"'No malpractice' by climate unit

The row surrounds e-mails hacked from the University of East Anglia
There was no scientific malpractice at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, which was at the centre of the "Climategate" affair.

This is according to an independent panel chaired by Lord Oxburgh, which was convened to examine the research published by the unit."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8618024.stm

"We found absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever..."

UEA's vice chancellor Edward Acton said he welcomed the report.

"It is especially important that, despite a deluge of allegations and smears against the CRU, this independent group of utterly reputable scientists have concluded that there was no evidence of any scientific malpractice," he said

This is the academic equivalent of using all-caps.

Why is it that the more definite they sound, and the more hysterical their denunciations of 'smears and allegations', the less credible they appear?

BBC reports Israel story straight shocker

2010-04-13T17:01:00.003+01:00

'The Israeli military says it hit a group of Palestinians laying explosives near Gaza's perimeter fence.

Islamic Jihad, a radical Islamist group, said the Israeli troops entered the Gaza Strip and fired from a helicopter and tanks.

The body of a 23-year-old Islamic Jihad fighter was taken to a Gaza hospital immediately after the fighting. A second body was later retrieved from the area, it was reported.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8616886.stm

Something has happened to the BBC website! This article does a pretty effective job of a) reporting the news and b) not slandering Israel.

What has gone on? A huge cull of leftie droids at Television Centre? The belated imposition of actual editorial control on the BBC website?

Whatever it is, it is highly welcome. And not before time.

BBC shills for China

2010-04-13T15:58:00.002+01:00

'China's "Shock and Awe" Fighter Jets'

'China has given the world a glimpse of its air force at a special performance by a display team.

Four Chinese-made J-10 fighters put on a show of aerial stunts at a military base just outside the city of Tianjin.

China hopes the manoeuvrability and price of the J-10 will make it attractive to buyers in other countries.

The BBC's Michael Bristow was at the show in Tianjin.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8617993.stm

Time was when journalists actually investigated claims and dug up information which might throw a more realistic light on propaganda. But not the BBC! No no.

If you watch the video, you might be disappointed with the 'arial stunts' touted by the BBC so breathlessly. They involve the planes flying slowly past and then- steady yourself- turning.

Left unmentioned by the BBC are any of these facts:

"Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad J-10?

January 30, 2007: The Taiwanese air force does not seem terribly concerned about China's new J10 fighters. In service for two years now, China only publicly announced the J10s status in January, 2007. What was not mentioned in the press releases was that only one J10 squadron was stationed where it might encounter Taiwanese F-16s or Mirage jet fighters. That squadron is sitting at a base just out of range (560 kilometers) of the F-16s and Mirages...

...the word out of China is that the J10 is a maintenance nightmare, and that the Chinese are having a hard time keeping the aircraft operational in reasonable numbers...

...Originally, the J10 used a Russian AL-31FN engine, but China has been working for a decade to manufacture their own version of this, the WS10A. China has been striving for decades to develop the ability to manufacture high-performance jet engines. The WS10A is something of an acid test for them, as it is a powerful military engine, and a complex piece of work. Russia refused to license China to produce the AL-31FN, so the Chinese stole as much of the technology as they could and designed the WS10A. This engine has been tested, but apparently still has quality control and performance problems..."

So, to sum up, the Chinese have little confidence in the J-10, it is a maintenance nightmare which means few are actually available for flying at any one time, and the engine design is based on a really successful Russian engine which the Chinese reverse-engineered totally illegally, and not very well. Oh, and it is WAAAAAAAAAY behind schedule.

But don't go looking for that information from the BBC. They are desperate for somebody to come along and knock the yanks off their perch. Somebody, anybody, preferably at least superficially commie...

Who thinks Islam is great?

2010-04-08T11:41:00.001+01:00

'There are seven of the structures on the range at Bellerby, which have green domed roofs. Ishtiaq Ahmed of the BCM said that they were undoubtedly meant to resemble mosques.

"The shape of the structures, the colour of the dome - the green dome - symbolises an Islamic place of worship," he said.

"Anyone looking at it will think about mosques and Muslims and think about them negatively."'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/8608282.stm

Yes, well if you add snake-like talking out of both sides of your mouth to murderous bombings and terrorist activity, what you get is... negativity.

Cuddly Dragons and real Vikings

2010-04-07T11:35:00.005+01:00

'Which brings us back to How to Train Your Dragon. My daughter would have liked it less, but a refreshing and more realistic ending would have had the Vikings enlisting their new, fire-breathing pets in a massive invasion of Europe, laying waste to all they saw and bringing the hated Christians to heel. Because that’s really what Vikings do.'

http://article.nationalreview.com/430483/the-monster-victim-mix-up/jonah-goldberg

This didn't evoke any great insight in me, but it did remind me of a conversation I had in an auberge-de-jeunesse in Normandy back in the early '90s with a very nice woman from Denmark. When she found out I grew up in Lincolnshire, she got very excited, and went off on a spiel about how much Danish influence there was in my home county. I didn't interrupt her, and thought it rude to mention that not only do we English not consider the Danish influence positively, we don't consider it Danish.

To us, the word Viking still has a frisson of hatred and fear. And whatever contributions they may have made to the English language, law and governance, they are remembered by common English folk as murderous thieving villains without mercy and without religion.

But the lady was nice, and I didn't want to spoil supper!

Extreme irrationality the hallmark of Lefties

2010-04-05T22:50:00.004+01:00

'...Created in June 2008, HCAN raised more than $40 million from liberal foundations and unions...
...The largest actors in HCAN -- USAction, SEIU, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, ACORN, and MoveOn -- are all, in political scientist Theda Skocpol's terms, "federated" organizations. Each used its capacity to mobilize people at the local and state levels but also to coordinate strategy at the national level...
In the 15 months since Obama's inauguration, HCAN, a large and sometimes unwieldy coalition, was often uneasy about whether to be mainly a support group for the White House or a more assertive prod. But in the end it has played a very important role in rallying the base, smoking out the destructive role of the industry, and making it difficult politically for the administration to indulge its fantasies of a bipartisan deal...

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=lessons_from_the_health_care_wars

I'm sure there must be someone out there so sad that they actually care who comprises HCAN. And I'm sure there must be a few sad sacks who think that 'rallying the base, smoking out the destructive role of the industry, and making it difficult politically for the administration to indulge its fantasies of a bipartisan deal' are real things, and even important real things.

But last time I checked- for the whole of the Obama administration's existence, the Democrat party has controlled the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. For legislation to become law, both the House and Senate must pass it, and the President sign it. So why didn't they do that the day after the inauguration? Given that both Obama and Hillary Clinton had healthcare reform as a major plank of their platform, we all knew it was going to happen. So why was it such an abortion?

Nobody needed HCAN for anything. It was redundant, purposeless, pointless. '"The message we have is simple," says Richard Kirsch, director of Health Care for America Now (HCAN)... "Congress should listen to us, not the insurance industry."' Why? What have you got to say that is either meaningful, different and relevant?

What HCAN was asking for, Obama had already told them he would deliver. And he did. Why do you need to gather together $40 million, and a thousand existing groups to ask for something that has already been promised, and now delivered?

It was and is completely irrational. Without a single Republican vote, or a single dollar from HCAN, or a single email from the nutroots, the Democrats could have passed their healthcare abortion on the first day after Obama took power. So why was it a solid year of tortuous and clownish bickering and bitching?

And apart from endlessly reiterating their belief that the health insurance companies are Satan, what did HCAN do? Absolutely nothing. The Obama healthcare 'reform' bill ensconces the health insurers in a nice feather bed of 32 million more policies, from what I have read, which people by law have to buy. Win!

It demonstrates what enormous efforts lefties are willing to put into vacuous campaigns about pretty much nothing, as long as there is some Emmanuel Goldstein to hep everybody up with.

See, you all just want to be self-righteous

2010-04-05T13:39:00.003+01:00

'Purging moral questions from politics is both impossible and undesirable. But today's tendency to turn every contentious issue into a moral confrontation is divisive. One way of fortifying people's self-esteem is praising them as smart, public-spirited and virtuous. But an easier way is to portray the "other side" as scum: The more scummy "they" are, the more superior "we" are. This logic governs the political conversation of both left and right, especially talk radio, cable channels and the blogosphere.

Unlike economic benefits, psychic benefits can be dispensed without going through Congress. Mere talk does the trick. Shrillness and venom are the coin of the realm. The opposition cannot simply be mistaken. It must be evil, selfish, racist, unpatriotic, immoral or just stupid. A culture of self-righteousness reigns across the political spectrum. Stridency from one feeds the other. Political polarization deepens; compromise becomes harder. How can anyone negotiate if the other side is so extreme?'

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/05/the_poisonous_politics_of_self-esteem_105044.html

So, then a plague on both their houses, but mainly the right; 'talk radio, cable channels and the blogosphere' are the widely used code for raving right wing lunatics.

Why are American politics so poisonous at the moment? Not for the first time, I would moot two likely reasons. The end of the cold war meant Americans had no external enemies worthy of the name, so all their psychic venom was reserved for 'internal enemies'. And because 'progressivism' has been so comprehensively debunked, and yet American lefties don't know it, and don't want to know.

Anybody with even a passing interest in the 20th century will have noted how the basic tenets of 'progressivism'- a massive state, state ownership of the means of production, central planning of the economy and society, high taxes, cradle-to-grave economic security guarunteed by the state, 'social justice' by fiat, the elimination of the free market, the complete absence of personal responsibility and the negation of individuality- have been tested to destruction. Over and over again, societies all over the world have tried them, and collapsed as a direct consequence.

All over the world, these progressive tenets are now in high disrepute- except in America. China, Russia, India, France and many other smaller countries have ditched progressivism because they tried it and it doesn't work.

So what millions of American independents, conservatives and libertarians can't understand is, why Americans lefties think these long-discredited policies will work in America.

If Obama, Pelosi and Reid were proposing ground-breaking new policies based on demonstrably sound economic and public policy research, would they be getting this response? Perhaps, if they interfered with the economic arrangements that have made America the worlds greatest ever economic superpower. But then again perhaps not.

But what was absolutely guarunteed was that interfering with American economic arrangements by implementing the tired failures of 'progressivism' was always going to provoke an intense reaction.

There is no question that lefties throughout the twentieth century believed that socialist/marxist/leftist meant supremely moral. No matter how many people were murdered by communists, no matter how much pain and suffering communist regimes caused, lefties always believed that they were on the moral high ground. Contrast the hysterical vilification of Agusto Pinochet (three thousand murdered) with the almost complete ignoring of Pol Pot (three million murdered). When communists killed people, there was always a queue of people with excuses at the ready to minimise, rationalise and legitimise. When anti-communists killed communists, there was a huge megaphone at the ready to denounce, vilify and excoriate.

This ability to skew reality in its favour allows communism to extend its shelf life as a viable system of governance in places like America, where it was never tried.

'A culture of self-righteousness reigns across the political spectrum. Stridency from one feeds the other. Political polarization deepens; compromise becomes harder. How can anyone negotiate if the other side is so extreme?

Dangers are plain, as political scientists Morris Fiorina and Samuel Abrams argue in their book "Disconnect: the Breakdown of Representation in American Politics." Using opinion surveys, they show that polarization is stronger among elites (elected officials, activists, journalists) than the broad public. About 40 percent to 50 percent of Americans consistently classify themselves as "moderates." By contrast, political activists tend to identify themselves as "very liberal" or "very conservative." But it is the political class of activists that "dominate the political agenda" and determine "how the debate is conducted."'

Only a Democrat or Democrat sympathiser could have written this. As a description of recent political events in America, is is garbage. There are not two extreme polarised elites. There is one extreme left elite, the Democrats, and one moderate, ineffective confused elite, the Republicans. Most of the Republicans long ago lost any contact with conservative ideals and policy positions. Most of them voted for the bailouts, medicare expansion, 'No child left behind' and many other bipartisan expansions of the role of the state in America. George W Bush was a big-government Republican, and most Republican senators and congressmen are too.

What has happened since the Obama disaster unfolded is unprecedented in US politics. A huge swath, probably sixty percent or more of the electorate, suddenly find themselves un-represented by either of the large political parties. They can not distinguish between the behaviour of the GOP and the Democrats. Only a few minor voices on the fringes voice their own concerns and beliefs, people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party leaders. These fringe voices have neither office nor lobbying power, and yet they reflect accurately the views of a large majority of Americans- in small government, proper free markets, low taxes and low public debt.

Their new-found voice may be strident and forceful, but it is neither ideological nor is it extreme. The content of their ideas is the core of what America has thought and done for hundreds of years. It is the antithesis of novelty fad ideology- it is the tried and trusted wisdom of hundreds of years of experience.

So it is highly disingenuous of commentators like Samuelson to paint the situation of two intolerant extremes engaging in pleasing posturing for the sake of psychic benefit. As far as I can tell neither side is doing that. The Democrats are genuinely ignorant, and genuinely passionate about their terrible defunct socialism; and the American people are genuinely knowledgeable about the tried and tested ideas that America is based on, and passionately want them re-instated to their hallowed place in national life. The GOP- well, who cares?

The Samuelson thesis, the 'politics of self-esteem' is at best a misreading of the situation, and at worst an attempt by one side in the debate to muddy the waters for electoral advantage. It fails completely to credit that sixty percent of Americans might have a concrete understanding of the public policy issues at stake, and refuse to amend that understanding at the behest of career politicians for whom it is inconvenient and awkward. Americans even understand that there is going to be pain attached to the greater gain- that to get their country back to something like fiscal and governmental health there are going to have be higher taxes to pay off the deficit, and a great reduction in government programs. Some programs will need to be eliminated completely. Are they willing to pay that price? You bet.

For both Democrats and Republican politicians, this is bad news. It means less opportunities for graft, and less important institutions to preside over. Boo hoo. I'm sure they'll get over it somehow.

It seems that every week, some new crackpot distortion of the state of American politics is generated by the great lefty intelligentsia as a means to explain the enormous distaste for lefty thinking and lefty policy. In sum, they all don't amount to a hill of beans.

The Over-weening state is not the only culprit

2010-04-03T21:30:00.003+01:00

'The core concept of human rights is the protection of the irreducible safety and dignity of the individual from the massive and arbitrary power of the state.'

Really?

'A man standing alone in front of a tank in Tiannamen Square -- there's a human rights moment. The multitudinous horror of ethnic cleansing, raging warfare in the Congo, the nightmare of North Korea, the acid-tossing at schoolgirls by the Taliban -- there are people all over this world trembling at the might of the state, seeing their lives foreshortened or ruined, subject to unspeakable horrors at the hands of warlords and tyrants and revengeful dictatorships -- these are the fields of real human-rights violations.'

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2758470&p=2#ixzz0k4TQO8OV [Hat Tip: Instapundit]

While I'm sure Rex Murphy and I would agree with an awful lot, I just don't agree with his primary thesis here. And that he is mistaken in it is really evidenced by his list of human rights abuses. The man in Tianaman Square was indeed providing us with a tragic example of citizen at the mercy of the state. But two of the other three examples don't.

You could say about the Congo, not just now but for many decades, that it is an example of what happens to human rights when there is NO government (or commonwealth as Hobbes might have put it). Gangs of Rwandan murderers roam around murdering and raping as and when they feel the urge. And gangs of Congolese who are meant to be the army but aren't go around murdering and raping when THEY feel the urge. Many Congolese living in Eastern Congo probably spend every evening praying that the Congo will someday have a government which will protect their lives, their property and their dignity.

The Taliban were in no wise 'the government' of Afghanistan. They were a gang of religious fanatics who managed to take over Afghanistan for a few years, build nothing, develop nothing and produce nothing but discontent and quite a lot of dead bodies. But their control of Afghanistan was virtually zero outside of Kabul and Kandahar (and Bamiyan). Everywhere else people just got on with their unchanging lives.

'Human rights' is a very poor tool for analysing society, and whether that society is healthy and free. But I would think even people who disagree about exactly how important the concept of 'human rights' is, would agree that human rights as commonly understood can be threatened by many more things than an over-powerful state. Here is a list off the top of my head: a sadistic oligarchy (medieval Japan), sadistic local warlords (medieval China), uncontrolled criminal gangs (Mexico), ethnic civil war (Sri Lanka and Bosnia), communist insurgencies (India, Columbia), islamist insurgencies (long list, but take Iraq and Thailand as exemplars), class warfare (the Cheka in Russia during the revolution and post-revolution), socialist dystopias (Malawi, Cuba) completely ineffective police (Venezuela, Brazil), extreme poverty aggravated for political reasons (Haiti).

There is no question that human rights, as average people would think of them, are seriously threatened in the circumstances described above. In some of those cases, the government machinery plays at least some role (socialist dystopias) but not because it has complete control of the society in question. Indeed, far more often these situations arise because the state is incapable of effectively policing its own territory.

In America, a big part of the story of the human rights struggles of the fifties and sixties was Federal US power being used to force states to stop trashing the human rights of their black populations. Was that illegitimate? Who would argue that it was. On many occasions in history, centralised power has been more benign than local tyranny.

Blaming a powerful central government for ALL violations of human rights is both over the top and contrary to much of what history tells us. Unfortunately, the real situation is much more troubling. If the wrong men get into power, any effective power structure will give them the capability of ruining peoples lives. They may have power over five thousand people, or fifty million, but for the poor bastards at the receiving end the effect is pretty much the same.

The situation from about 1991 until 2008 was that the world had one superpower, and we were extremely fortunate that it was a benign one. But as human nature is wont to do, many kicked away at the shackles (such as they were) anyway.

What will come next? Will it be a nirvana of socialist/islamist/environmentalist freedom and joy? Or will it resemble the Congo? Who knows... but you better start praying anyway.

Atlas Shrugged coming to a town near you soon

2010-04-02T11:00:00.004+01:00

'The ironic part of Waxman's abuse of power is that he also demands that CEOs show up with "any documents, including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of health care reform."'

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/02/no_speech_for_you_105020.html

We all know what 'living up to a stereotype' means. But what about 'acting out somebodies novel'?

Having just bulldozed my way determinedly through 'Atlas Shrugged', it seems that America is determined to re-enact the novel in glorious 3-d. Henry Waxman is so obviously stealing lines from Wesley Mouch, there may well be a case for prosecuting him for plagiarism.

I discounted much of Ayn Rands signature novel as over-dramatised and implausible- but the Democrats are determined to bring it to life! Sadly missing from the book, though is a Nancy Pelosi figure. She'll just have to make do.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure there is no Galt's Gulch in their version...

The countries in the very best of hands

2010-04-02T10:48:00.003+01:00

'...on a visit to Ottawa to discuss Arctic policy with Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly criticized the Canadians for failing to invite all eight members of the Arctic Council to the consultation. Iceland, Finland and Sweden were miffed at being excluded. This was all very well and no doubt deserved; the next day, however, the Canadian Foreign Minister rejected Secretary Clinton’s pleas and announced that Canada will be ending its Afghan mission next year.'

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/03/31/kicked-by-the-great-white-north

Hillary Clinton- worst secretary of state ever? 'Bull in a China shop' doesn't cover it; after all, bulls are strong and dangerous. 'Drunk at a temperance meeting' doesn't either; drunks often have a superficial charm.

She is just phoning it in. In the most cack-handed way imaginable. And with bad grace. Wow.

Shrill gloating and its natural timespan

2010-04-02T10:02:00.003+01:00

'The signposts in the Republican universe have been abruptly altered. So don't let yourself become desensitized to the sight of conservatives stumbling, lost in the night, the way you avert your eyes when passing poor homeless souls on the sidewalk. Suffering is subjective. There are people on the street who really think they are Jesus. There are Republicans in our midst who really think Obama's version of Romneycare equals socialism. There but for the grace of God -- and maybe a little less sloppy thinking -- go we.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR2010033101663.html

I'm going to break my own number one rule of blogging, and make a comparison between this post and Nazi era propaganda. Nothing to do with content, but the tone and the psychological motivations of the piece. It has always struck me that Nazi propaganda tried too hard. It was shrill, it was bombastic, and it desperately wanted to convince people that the German Volk were indomitable, resolute and all the other things. But underlying it was a hidden fear, the fear that unless these things were screamed, shouted at top volume, the flaws in the arguments might start to show. Perhaps it isn't just a characteristic of Nazi propaganda but all propaganda. I don't know. But Nazi propaganda is where I noticed it.

This propaganda piece by Matt Miller is basically a schoolyard 'nyah nyah nee nyah nyah, we won you lost, you pitiful losers' taunt. For many Democrats whose whole political existences have revolved around the single fact that America is by a huge majority (approx 80%) conservative and deeply resistant to socialism, it must be terribly tempting to give in and rub salt in the supposed Republican wounds. And yes, many are succumbing to temptation.

What is not clear from either the passage of the Obama healthcare bill or the subsequent orgy of gloating, grandstanding and whooping-up is whether this is really a permanent victory won over the 'Republicans'. I say 'Republicans' because of course, the Obama healthcare bill applies to all Americans (except Senators and Congressmen).

Why should the Democrats be fearful? They are in charge of all branches of government, and the legacy news media are their shills. What could go wrong?

If in 1979 the average pundit in Britain had been shown by some magic the same country in 1990, I think most of them would have refused the evidence of their own eyes. The idea that all the nationalised industries, the huge centrally planned British state would be swept away by one woman and her determined band of ideologues would have been beyond comprehension.

But that could never happen to the vast statist constructions of the Democrats in America, surely?

OK, then, riddle me this: Do most Americans believe in socialist solutions to their problems in 2010? In voting for Barack Obama, did they believe that they were voting in a hard-left ideologue? I'm pretty sure they voted for a nice, well-spoken chap with a nice family who talked all the time about healing divides, making politics transparent and reforming the way business was done in Washington DC. He promised to revive the image of America in the world, and other pleasant things.

Who knew he would be the most partisan president ever? Who knew he would enact the most far-reaching transformations of the US economy since Franklin Roosevelt? Who knew he would enact these transformations in the middle of a very severe economic recession with utter disregard for the consequences?

Not even dogged sceptics like me. I had no idea that he would pursue his leftist agenda with such complete disregard for the economic situation and the political one too.

The reaction has been extreme and instantaneous. For many millions of Americans, they fear for the first time that Washington DC is going to pull the rest of the nation down into the abyss, and they feel a personal need to stop that from happening.

The brazen and provocative misconstrual of the Obama mandate by Democrats has not gone unnoticed by the majority of Americans. The polls tell this story very clearly. And with the rising tsunami of anger about this bait-and-switch comes the ever greater likelihood that Obamacare has a short life expectancy.

So perhaps the flaws in the arguments in pieces like Matt Millers, the truths peeking out from behind the bombast, are these: that while the statist, centally-planned government in America has grown and grown over 75 years, it has never provoked a reaction from Americans like the one we see now; and that when Americans come to scrutinise the real state of their nation, they will see how far down the road to a statist, centrally-planned dystopia they are already. And they are quite likely to hate it. And plan is dismantling.

If you think that is crazy, and could never happen, ask Margaret Thatcher.

It isn't just about free speech

2010-03-30T10:48:00.002+01:00

'Shamefully, even Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst weighed in on the side of censorship, saying in a statement that “Every citizen is entitled to the freedom of speech, but no one should have the right to use government funds or institutions to portray acts that are morally reprehensible to the vast majority of Americans.”'

http://volokh.com/2010/03/29/a-sad-victory-for-thuggery-in-texas/

Strange days we live in. Lt Governor Dewhurst, who I don't know from Adam, is slammed by Eugene Volokh for crimes against free speech.

As if there were not two issues here.

Fist issue- free speech. I am always on the side of free speech, whenever or wherever.

Second issue- whether the public should pay to have its religion trashed, its values mocked and its way of life undermined.

Does Lt Governor Dewhurst have a valid point about the second issue or not? A couple of years ago the BBC commissioned an extremely hateful and blasphemous TV play ripping into Christianity- despite the fact that 70% of Britons are self-declared Christians. This majority are forced by the government to pay over a hundred and twenty pounds every year to fund the BBC whether they like it or not.

I would love to hear the moral justification for being forced to pay to hear your deepest held beliefs rediculed and spat upon. I absolutely uphold the right of athiests and Christian-haters to espouse their views- and I also absolutely uphold my right to not to have to pay for that.

Most American Universities and colleges get funds from the State and Federal governments. Should there not be a mechanism for de-funding Universities and Colleges which consistently promote anti-American, anti-free market, pro-marxist views held by virtually no American taxpayers? If you want to run a University where these views are consistently and methodically taught, let the free market decide how much real demand there is for those things.

When funding issues are mooted, the left insists that it be allowed to dominate Universities and Colleges, and that any attempt to take away their funding strikes at the freedom of speech and the fundamental principles of Academic freedom. The rest of the time, they are perfectly happy to interfere with the free-speech rights of conservatives and patriotic Americans, army recruiters, pro-gun groups and loads of other non-pc organisations, and squelch academic freedom under the guise of preventing hate speech and providing a 'safe learning environment'.

Anybody who can't figure out this shell game really needs to go back to primary school.

The game that the left have perfected is to make guilty people pay to have their own institutions and beliefs subverted.

It is time to stop.

Was MAD an illusion?

2010-03-28T14:19:00.003+01:00

'Call me a cynic, but the latest agreement between the United States and Russia to cut their stocks of nuclear weapons seems nothing over which to expend any enthusiasm. Quite the contrary. It's a hangover from the dead and distant days of the Cold War. Disarmament mattered when Ronald Reagan faced Mikhail Gorbachev, because it expressed the understanding that mutually assured destruction was not a real policy.'

http://pryce-jones.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2JjY2RkZjc2MmIzMThmMmFlZTBlZjhiZjA2YWIyMjA=

How can you take seriously a self-declared 'cynic', who presumably considers himself a hard-bitten realist, who declares that 'mutually assured destruction was not a real policy'?

Really? That's funny. I thought it was the declared policy of both superpowers through most of the third world war. And to some degree, is still the policy of the large nuclear powers. Wishing away MAD, declaring it null and void, disappearing it by fiat- what is that all about?

The threat of annihilation sharply focused minds on both sides of the cold war. And despite lots of little hot wars throughout the cold war, none of these brush fires ever became devastating all-out wars precisely because neither side would accept the terrible consequences. In Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Southern Africa, Nicaragua and lots of other places, smallish wars stayed that way because nuclear exchanges would have destroyed the very superpowers who were playing this game.

What do people have against MAD anyway? It was not a policy at all, it was a description of what a large-scale nuclear exchange would do. There was no way of triangulating it either. Would the United States have accepted a large scale nuclear attack on itself without launching a similarly large-scale one on the USSR? Absurd. As soon as both sides in the cold war had both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to launch them on MAD was the prevailing situation.

Start and the other big nuclear drawdown treaties were about money, largely. Large ballistic missile fleets cost hideously large sums of money. Smaller, newer, more deadly arsenals of ballistic weapons suited both sides, so the deal were done.

All the countries which had nuclear weapons by the mid-fifties still have them actively deployed. The only significant event to do with nuclear weapons was the breakup of the Warsaw Pact. And that did not involve any country which had nuclear weapons beforehand giving them up.

I agree with Mr Pryce-Jones that the Obama goal of worldwide nuclear disarmament is absurdly naive. But believing that MAD didn't exist or was somehow illusory? Getting on for equally naive.

Destroying the market place

2010-03-28T12:03:00.004+01:00

'Sony Entertainment has shut down Beyonce's official YouTube site. Congrats to Sony Entertainment for wisely spending its legal dollars and working on behalf of its artists. Truly, you deserve many laws and secret treaties passed to protect your "business model" (how else could such a delicate flower survive the harsh realities of the real world?).'

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/26/sony-accuses-beyonce.html

I expect this kind of crap from the mushy, right-on lefties over at BoingBoing, but you as well, Professor Reynolds?

As a dedicated and faithful reader of InstaPundit, it pains me to see Prof Reynolds siding with the 'brave' artists against the faceless money-grubbing music corporations.

The last time I checked, the sanctity of the contract was one of the bedrock foundations of our economic prosperity. And if Beyonce has a contract with Sony which precludes her putting her own videos on YouTube, where Sony can't make any money from them, then she shouldn't. Contracts have to be mutually agreed, right? So when did Beyonce decide she could unilaterally break it with no consequences?

The 'laws and secret treaties' which the lefties at BoingBoing despise are what make profitable commerce possible. They allow creators to benefit from their creations. Very often with the enormously useful assistance of some faceless corporation. Or did I miss a memo?

The Pirate Party and the other lefty rabble who promote 'free downloading' contend that if a crime is easy to commit, it can't be a crime. 'See how easy it is to download this MP3? That can't be a criminal act'. Driving drunk is easy too. But there is still a compelling case for it to be illegal.

Many on the right see the intellectual copyright issue through the prism of personal freedom and not from the perspective of the economically essential tradition of inviolate contracts. Which is weird. My freedom to download is curtailed at the point where someone owns the intellectual rights to that music, film or game. Or there is no market for those things.

The left would love that.

Follow up to The Great James Baker

2010-03-26T12:11:00.003Z

It is commonly assumed by pretty much everybody that Israel is the creation of some US/UK conspiracy, and has been funded, armed and protected by them from its inception.

Nothing could be further from the truth. So where did the idea come from? It is Palestinian/Arab propaganda. Why was this lie invented? To hide the real reason why in five major attempts the Arabs have been pathetically incapable of destroying Israel by military means. Without US and British military might helping them, this argument goes, we would have crushed the Zionist entity with ease! Yeah, right.

Both the US and the UK have had major interests in the Arab middle east since the early twentieth century. They were completely uninterested in a Jewish Israel because they understood that it would threaten their oil interests, especially in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Until the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and Ronald Reagan in America the year after, there was no principled support for Israel from US or British administrations. They remained either neutral, or were lukewarm allies of convenience. They didn't supply money, arms or diplomatic cover. France and Czechoslovakia were Israels primary friends, and Czech tanks and small arms and French Mirage jet fighters were the tools Israel used to fight its wars.

It was only when the Soviet Union ramped up its support of Syria, Egypt and Iraq that the US became interested in Israel as an ally. Even then, it was very slow off the mark. The UK, which largely supported Jordan in that vicinity, was even slower. Why is it that Israel has its own main battle tank, the Merkava, rather than Challenger 2's or M1 Abrams? Because even in the 1980's, with somewhat pro-Israel govenments, neither the UK nor the US would sell Israel their top-line kit. The US did figure out in the mid-1980's that selling fighter jets to Israel was the best way to find out whether they had the technology lead over the soviets.

The fact is, Israel exists because of money from groups of American Jews, fighter jets from France and tanks and small arms from Czechoslovakia. For the first half of Israels existence, the US and UK governments were always lukewarm allies, if that. All 'information' to the contrary is Arab dissimulation designed to hide their godawful military records.

Could Israel survive without positive help from the US? Absolutely. It did it before, and it will this time. Especially as the millions of Jews in America who supported Israel in the past will always rally around. And there are always countries like India whose diplomatic and political elites do not have the ingrained historical anti-semitism present in those of the US and the UK, who will act as conduits and providers of armaments and trade.

Israel has already withstood enormous challenges to its existence, and through a combination of toughness, wilyness and friends like France and Czechoslovakia, survived to see its sixtieth birthday. Whether it lives to see its seventieth and eightieth does not depend on the friendship of the United States government.

Thank God.

The Great James Baker

2010-03-23T15:54:00.002Z

'I think the Secretary of State can be forgiven for not looking forward to this year's [AIPAC] conference with any great relish.

Perhaps she, like me, is thinking about James Baker. For 21 years ago he stood where Hillary will stand on Monday morning and told his stunned AIPAC hosts that it was time, in his words, "for Israel... to lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel. Foreswear annexation; stop settlement activity".'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8577691.stm

Is this, by any chance, the same James Baker who has been on the wrong side of pretty much every major foreign policy blunder of the late twentieth and twenty first centuries? Is it the James Baker who advised George Bush the First not to get rid of Saddam Hussein when it would have been easy peasy, and let him continue his grotesque reign for reasons of 'realpolitik'? Is it perchance the same James Baker who advised Bill Clinton not to bother with intervening in the local spot of bother in Rwanda? Is it by any chance the same James Baker who sat on the Iraq Great and Good Bore-a-thon Study Group, which said Iraq was over all bar the shooting, and we should just accept a Kurdistan, Sunniistan and the Shias ending up a province of Iran?

Yeah, he's a fucking genius.

Definitely take his advice.

'Israel should give up its vision of Greater Israel'. Why? It already exists. It has existed de facto since 1967. You and who's army gonna change that fact?

A slowly decaying carcase

2010-03-13T22:46:00.003Z

'Why is there no British Tea Party? Where are the crowds of revenue slaves flocking to London to demand redress for the squandering of their money? Marginal tax is rising to 50%, VAT to 17.5% and state spending towards half the national product. The Treasury has lost control of public finance. So why no furious blue-rinses, bail-out haters, bonus-bleaters and embittered VAT victims storming parliament? Has a corrupt political class reduced the British people to quiescent gerbils?

'

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/reaction-to-the-inaugural-british-tea-party-event/2/

Yes. Yes it has.

My 'memories' of the Thatcher revolution were all acquired after the fact, as I wasn't here for it. But I've watched many documentaries (yes, that's how sad I am) about it, and I often wonder 'where are all those strange, intense young men, and those doughty homely maidens who were the engine of the the Thatcher revolution?'

Have they all got jobs in the city, children in private school and a hangover of guilt for 'destroying' the mining industry, the steel industry, the ship-building industry and all those other great cadavers? Do they feel that they 'ought' to pay 50% income tax so that those less well orf have a comfy life?

Political discussion in Britain occurs between two very large groups of people- those who have been educated by marxists, preached to every night through TV and the movies by marxists, who parrot marxist beliefs about the world, the US, British history and everything else (approx. half the country); and a second group of nice people who go to work, run businesses, have successful happy capitalist lives, and who feel very guilty about their happy successful lives because they are constantly told to be guilty by the first group.

These two groups form the basis of our politics. The first group vote Labour, and the second group vote Tory or Lib Dem. The first group I will call Leftroids. The second group I will call Cringers. Leftroids spent the middle sixty years of the twentieth Century on the front foot. They have been on defense since 1991, but came back solidly in the last few years. Cringers have been on defense for the whole of the twentieth century, and are still cringing in the twenty first. Cringers spend most of their time protecting themselves from the slings and arrows of accusations by the Leftroids that they are heartless, soulless money-grubbing demons. They can spare no time whatsoever for considerations outside of that task.

Leftroids really control the game. They hold the gun of working class violence, which they dextrously use to blackmail things out of cringers. Cringers are so frightened of working class violence that they will pre-emptively give Leftroids things they haven't even demanded yet. There is also a secret deal where Leftroids squirrel away tens of billions of pounds into things called QUANGOs, which are really a permanent employment scheme for over-educated Cringers.

Cringers have no backbone, no will to resist, no desire to upset Leftroids. They just want to keep their happy, peaceful lives and not be murdered in their beds by angry proletarians. They are willing to pay very high taxes indeed, and see that money going to foriegn immigrants and ne'er do wells and any man jack who can't be bothered to go to work. As long as they don't move too near, or commit their crimes in Cringer neighborhoods, they don't care a lick.

It really is extremely depressing. I understand why so many of Britains brightest people have gone away. Why would you want to stay here in this decayed civilisation as it quietly disintegrates.

Diplomacy by personal feelings

2010-03-13T10:48:00.003Z

'US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sharply rebuked Israel over its recent decision to build new settlements in East Jerusalem.

She told Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu by telephone that the move was "deeply negative" for US-Israeli relations.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8565455.stm

So, the first thing the Obama administration did in its 'quest for peace' in the middle east was to force a settlement freeze on Israel. A direct consequence of that was that a large block of swing voters in Israel moved in favour of ignoring American threats, and continuing the very long-standing process of re-Judiasing Israel via settlements. Who wants to knuckle under to some heavy-handed bully?

So, instantly, the course of peace in the middle east was dealt a decades-long blow. Israelis resented American threats and coercion, and determined to resist them; and the Arab positions regarding Israel immediately hardened up. Fantastic.

As a direct result of this behaviour, Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a mighty 'fuck you' to America during the visit of vice-president Biden. In what is possibly a unique event in Israeli-American relations, Netanyahu announced a new settlement building program during a visit by a high-ranking American politician. Amazing. That is as close as you get in diplomacy to actually bitch-slapping another country in the face.

All that Hillary Clintons shrill and emotional response will do is reinforce in Israeli minds that their take on the Obama administration is the right one- the latter are no friends of Israel. They might on occasion pay lip-service to Israels right to exist and the usual formulations, but at heart, they just don't like Israel. Their starting point is the same starting point of Palestinian supporters the world over- it is really all Israels fault.

So for the next three years I expect the relationship between the the Israeli government and the American administration to be thinly-veiled hostility. Even while more and more American citizens support Israel.

Well, I think it is pretty certain that the next president of the United States will be a conservative Republican, so it's only three years until normal service is resumed...

I predict a riot

2010-03-13T00:28:00.004Z

Mark Steyn, as I have said before, called this AGES ago. Democrats don't care if they have to perform a suicide mission to get their healthcare bill. Once it is passed, they own the country. Nationalised medicine in America will be an enormous public utility, stuffed with public sector unions, and people who owe the Democrat party their place in life.

It will rip the heart out of what is left of American free enterprise, and replace it with European style state capitalism. Once the bureaucrats get the kind of grip they have in Britain, Germany, France and all the others, there is no going back.

The Thatcher revolution got about half way through the enormous embedded collossi of bureaucracies before it stalled.

The amount of naivety in the States is staggering. Mainly because America has never taken this road this far. A knowledgeable Russian would be able to put them straight, but Americans have a severe tendency to only learn from their own mistakes. Unfortunately, once they've made this one, they will never unmake it.

I just watched Bret Baeir and the Fox All-stars on FOX, and some fat Democrat bitch was smugly explaining how the healthcare bill will now definitely pass, given that the Dems will force it through using reconciliation. I could tell from the body language and actual language of both Charles Krauthammer and the other guy that they both believe she is right. And they understand the staggering implications.

What will happen if the bill passes? The anger levels are high now.

I don't think the anger will simply be against the Dems either. The Republicans have benn spectacularly useless during the whole deal, and have not got in peoples faces to explain what is really going on.

What do Plaid Cymru or the SNP have to offer Britain?

2010-03-10T20:04:00.004Z

I rarely bother with British politics because I can't seem to find any political view represented other than a stodgy left-wing drizzle.

But this story made me belly laugh.

The richness of the language used in their whiny letter was delightful:

"For politics to be about healthy debate, the winning of hearts and minds, rather than about prior tribal political affiliation, then parties in reasonable competition must be given similar opportunity to present their policy platform to the electorate.

"The medium of television has a unique ability at election time to bring the competition of ideas, which is at the heart of the democratic system, into the living room of every voter in the country.

"Without a properly informed electorate, the conditions for free election are not possible."

Going back to the title of this post, what do Plaid Cymru or the SNP have to offer British people?

There doesn't seem to be any irony in this letter. They aren't kidding. Which is strange, because the idea that Plaid Cymru and the SNP should have anything at all to say to English people never seems to have interested them before this very moment. They are deeply ethnocentric organisations, die-hard nationalists- and their nation is not Britain! So really, what do they want to say to us?

Because anybody who has been alive for the last twenty years in Britain could probably sum up British politics rather neatly like this:

Scotland: Communist
Wales: Communist
Northern Ireland: Er, yes, well...
England: Conservative Capitalist (paying for everybody as per fucking usual)

So I can imagine a 'sharing of ideas' between the four of us would be a 'Janet and John learn about Communism' lecture for English people from PC and the SNP, some incoherent babbling from the Ulster crowd, and a primer in basic economics from the English to the other three.

Nobody would listen to anybody else, and the English would pick up the tab.

I have always been a British nationalist, but I have to say as the years pass and the third world idiots of Scotland and Wales persist in their insults and their lush subsidies, it is becoming ever harder to muster the desire for a United Kingdom.

If you think Greece is a washed-up socialist basket-case, wait til there is an independent Wales and an independent Scotland. We'll have to build a big fucking wall to keep out the hordes of refugees.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/wales_politics/8560022.stm

Absolutely the last thing I want to hear during the Prime Ministerial debates is a droning Plaid Cymru fathead wimbling on about the usual socialist flim flam. We had forty years of it in England, and I've just about managed to wipe most of it out of my memory. I do NOT want a revisitation, thanks very much.

Kill your communists early

2010-03-10T12:26:00.002Z

'Chile is regarded as having one of the best-run economies in Latin America.

Led by its substantial copper production - which was relatively unaffected by the quake - economists predict the country's economy will still grow by 5% this year.

The country also has one of the lowest government debt to economic output ratios in Latin America.

Chile's inflation rate is currently at 1.5% and its interest rate is 0.5%, where it has been since August of last year.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8559127.stm

8.8 richter scale earthquake, and yet their economy is going to grow 5%...

What does this teach us children?

I would say, kill your communists early. If you look around at the dismal basket cases which litter Latin and South America, the poorest ones, the ones that haven't had a decent economy ever, or not since the sixties anyway, are all socialist or communist.

Look what the socialists managed to do to Venezuela and Argentina, two countries that virtually had first world levels of infrastructure and economy as recently as the seventies. Argentina used to be as rich as Italy. Now it ranks down there with the Balkans and unluckier eastern Europeans.

Chile was lucky enough that Salvador Allende was cut down before he could really start to destroy the country.

Where would you want to live in South America?

Will there be a revolt against Democrat Party Despotism?

2010-03-09T10:04:00.003Z

I try not to do a whole lot of prognosticating, because, well, it's dumb. But here is a guess. I believe that if the Democrats pass Healthcare reform by means of reconciliation, which it looks increasingly likely they will, the response will not be the usual response to an unpopular piece of legislation becoming law. Because of the extremely partisan way it was created, because of the Sesame Street level lies peddled on its behalf, because back in June/July Obama tried to ram the legislation through with NO debate and because the Democrats have failed to cloak the real reason why they are DESPERATE to pass this massive nationalisation, I think the response will be more akin to a peasants revolt. It may well generate significant violence against a government which is deemed by many to be tyrannical.

I hope it doesn't happen. But the anger out there is palpable, and forcing through this massive nationalisation will confirm in many minds that the only way to stop it from destroying America is to get rid of it by force. Could be very messy indeed.

Question: will the US forces, who very much dislike Obama, shoot on their own people? Or will it be like East Germany and Hungary, where the internal police told their political masters that they would under no circumstances shoot their own populace.

To quote the declaration of Independence:

'...to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.'

Beautiful, elegant words, but revealing the point of the cutlass, the muzzle of the gun.

In China they kill she-babies, in London they kill beta males

2010-03-08T16:30:00.003Z

Interestingly, I don't hear a lot about this from feminists.

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15636231&fsrc=rss

But then you have a different trend in the hyper-advanced west. Here we have uber-bitch harridans who are indoctrinated in the Vogue/Elle/Cosmo worldview from twelve or thirteen years old. This acculturation ensures that they will despise real men, normal men, and spend years having loads of sex and no relationships. They will hanker after Bridget Jones's diary-type men, either sociopathic alpha males with sports cars and no emotions, or tall, dark handsome rich alpha lawyers. Eventually, when they are thirty nine, 98% alchoholic, and have skin like a leather handbag, they will write a bitter book about how men are just unwilling to commit- you know, commitmentphobes.

These women are unsuitable for any normal man. They are useless in every practical sense. Their culture is utterly alien to most men, and their attitudes militate against long-term anything. Many of my male peer group married women from foreign countries- Phillipino, Korean, Russian, Hungarian. Why do you think that is?

Could it be that British and American women are just so awful, so full of machismo, braggadocio and attitude, that reasonable men will not marry them. And if they do, it is with an air of resignation and having settled for a life of misery and abuse.

My parents marriage was imperfect. My mother was bossy, rarely pleased with her husband and thought very little of his happiness. Her generation of the fifties was the direct predeccessor to my generation. As far as I can tell, my generation will be the last one like it. Why? Because so many of these hideous bitches are single, and hopelessly so, that they will not have the chance to procreate and pass on their bile. Thank God, is all I can say.

The Cosmo girl, who resembles most a kind of sixties bimbo lad, is guarunteed to become extinct. The attitudes fostered by Cosmo: permanent domination of men by women, men are stupid, men are lazy, men are evil, men are incompetent, women are superior, women are ethical, women are good, etc, pretty much guaruntee that only masochistic men will try to procreate with them. And there just aren't that many masochistic men.

Among the many dysfunctions which can be directly traced to the sixties 'revolution' (destruction of Judeo-Christian morals replaced by... nothing), this one is the most directly self-destructive. I for one will be happy when the last laddette vomits her last stomachful of chablis and lurches off into the pages of history...

Zimbabwe nearing its rendezvous with the sewage pit

2010-03-06T16:09:00.004Z

'The main focus is Zimbabwe's rich mines and its industry.

But the indigenisation law also seeks to prevent white people from owning things like hairdressing and beauty salons.

In a few years, says Pat, we will be like an extinct species. They will come for our houses next.

The reaction may well be extreme.

Many white Zimbabweans have been slow to acknowledge the debt they owe to the black majority here. Economic empowerment is clearly necessary.

But after a decade of economic chaos, horrific violence, and the brutal seizure of white-owned farms, it is easy to understand why so many Zimbabweans - of all colours - are hair-trigger tuned to expect the very worst.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8551616.stm

Er, excuse me? What debt? What do white Zimbabweans owe, and to whom? How did this judgement, this command to action, get into a news report about Zimbabwe? Who presumes to sit in judgement upon these hundreds of thousands of people, and order them to hand over their money and farms and goods to unknown black people?

Completely disgusting. You call that journalism?

Economic empowerment is clearly necessary? What does that even mean? This god-like pomposity is what gets up peoples noses about the British A LOT. 'Oh yes, I've come to your country for three days, had a bit of a wander around, and have come to the conclusion that economic empowerment is clearly necessary, old bean.' Fuck right off. Have you read any objective histories of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Andrew Harding, or are you just parroting the marxist garbage you hoovered up at poly?

Most of the whites left in Zimbabwe are now stony broke because of the nation-wide theft of commercial farms from their owners, and all the sorry knock-ons from that process. What have you got left to steal?

What theory of economics spawned 'economic empowerment'? Isn't economic empowerment a euphemism for black people stealing working businesses from white people and proceeding to run them into the ground?

Part of me, the perverse part, wishes that Zimbabwe goes full steam ahead with 'economic empowerment'. Soon Zimbabwe, already heading like a runaway train towards the economic precipice, will drop over the edge into the abyss where places like Liberia and Haiti already wallow.

But then the other part of my self reminds the perverse part that that will simply mean another deluge of Zimbabweans into Britain and another vast collection of people in Zimbabwe living off the World Food Program dole.

Somebody needs to shoot Mugabe, and the top twenty generals and air force commanders and throw them in a pit somewhere. Then Zimbabwe might just have the possiblity of a viable future.

Losing with the talking

2010-03-05T20:03:00.003Z

'Is there any evidence — anything at all — to suggest the Matheson nomination is related in any way to getting his brother's vote on health care? No. There's literally nothing.

Of course, there is evidence. The evidence is the need to persuade the congressman and the timing of the the nomination of the brother. It's not conclusive proof, but it is evidence. We need more evidence to answer our questions, but there is surely a basis of our questions.

But it's nevertheless the talk of the conservative world today....

And you know damned well it would be the talk of the liberal world if Bush were still President and... man, that point is tedious. But it's so apt! Politicos are so boring. Blech.'

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/03/reason-this-isnt-what-it-looks-like-is.html

Instapundit had a post the other day about the Popular Mechanics long, thorough debunking of the 9/11 Truther lies, basically saying it was a waste of time. I agree. Conspiracy theories are not by their nature disprovable. The people who love conspiracy theories are not engaged in a scientific debate about events that are part of the historical record. Conspiracy theories are a way of taking reality and molding and distorting it until it fits a priori beliefs about the 'way things really are'.

Which brings me back to this rather hilarious Ann Althouse post. The purpose of 95% of writing on the left is not the establishment of the true state of America, the best possible policy offerings, or an accurate characterisation of the issues of the day. The purpose is to fill the air, the newspaper and the tv screen with lefty noise, lefty opinion, lefty blather, lefty hate, lefty propaganda, lefty anything. It is to make sure that no matter where people go to college, no matter what TV network they watch, no matter what films they see, no matter what school they attend, their eyes and ears will be constantly bombarded with the lefty view of the world. That is all.

Taking each individual lefty smear, lefty ad hominem, lefty lie, lefty distortion, lefty inaccuracy on as if in some debating club and doing a point by point demolition of it is completely pointless (if fun). It is pointless because there is no intention for any individual piece of the omnipresent lefty tirade to be true, accurate or reasonable. As soon as a new item of bullshit has been emitted, it is forgotten, superseded by the next item. This is not an exercise in truth-seeking by dialectic- it is a bombardment with the ultimate goal of smashing lefty ideas into every atom of every person in America (and Britain, and Germany, and France etc).

In this particular instance, there is prima facie evidence of corrupt behaviour on the part of the President. Interest on the left? None. No newspaper of note will report it, no large TV network will broadcast it. But there however will be the repetitive drone of 'the Tea Partiers are extremist hate-mongers drifing towards inevitable violence'. And 'the Republicans are the party of No'. And 'the Stimulus worked'. Etc Etc.

I love people like Charles Krauthammer, whose fine forensic mind disentangles the strands of complex debates and makes sense of them. But at some point you have to look at the situation and say- this is not a real debate. There is no respect for, nor recognition of the facts by the left.

Many Republicans criticised the deal Obama made with the big insurance companies to facilitate his terrible 'health care' bills. It looked awfully like a backroom deal which was great for government, great for insurance companies but terrible for everybody else. But after transmogrification in the lefty lying machine, Republicans and tea partiers were accused of COLLUDING WITH THE INSURANCE COMPANIES AGAINST THE HEALTH CARE REFORMS. If you are willing to tell that lie, you are probably willing to lie about anything, no matter how absurdly preposterous.

We do not have a situation where two bodies of respectful, respectable scientifically minded honest folk can debate the issues and come to a reasoned judgement. We have one, and the lefties. And as the old schoolboy maxim runs, if you argue with fools it will be hard for people to tell the difference.

So what are the options? Stop engaging the political opposition? Send them to coventry? Only talk to conservatives and Tea Party members?

It may be that the only serious option is to recognise what the left is doing, and copy their tactics. Trumpet conservative and libertarian ideas and world-view through every possible medium at all times, infiltrate all forums of political and cultural expression, infiltrate education, the media, movies, TV, coffee houses, dinner theatres, hair salons- be everywhere all the time. Never speak to the left, never listen to their arguments, never take them on in a 'debate', never even recognise their existence. Talk straight to the people. Always and at all times.

The alternative is to allow the whole of our societies to become an echo chamber of lefty talking points, lefty bullshit history, and lefty ad hominem attacks. We don't have to lose. But we have to take on this enemy in a way which provides hope of eventual success.

An Open Letter to the Indian Government

2010-03-04T10:30:00.007Z

I am certain that the Indian Government already know what I am about to suggest, but please do not imagine that Maoists can be bargained with. Any agreements they make will be tactical only. Their goals, the revolutionary overthrow of the Indian state and the imposition of murderous dictatorship never change. The only way to defeat them is to destroy them. Once young Maoist recruits have been indoctrinated they never give up fighting. Complete and total military victory is both necessary and within the power of the Indian state.

The current stance of the rebels shows both that the current military and police actions against them are succeeding, and that the Maoists now see it necessary to call upon the humane nature of the Indian government to save them from complete annihilation. The Maoist insurgency running from the north-east down to the south-east of India has run on since the late sixties, really without ever having been seriously challenged. Now that Pakistan can't possibly afford to attack India, the Indian government at last has the opportunity to bring all of its territory within its own genuine writ.

As the development work which the Indian government is pursuing in the rest of its states is not possible in the areas under Moaist control, it is essential for the latter to be eliminated. India has the potential to become a rich and powerful nation, but only when it truly controls its own destiny.

'India's Maoist rebels have again demanded the release of their senior leaders as a precondition for beginning talks with the government.

Maoist military wing head Koteswara Rao's demand comes a day after the arrest of Venkateswar Reddy, alias Telegu Deepak, in Calcutta.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8548809.stm

The BBC find a stick to beat the US with - shock

2010-03-04T09:46:00.005Z

After the disaster (for worldwide America-haters) which was the US response to the Haiti earthquake (US was the first responder, initiated a massive response, sent a huge hospital ship, hundreds of helicopters, thousands of troops to keep order and pass out aid, managed what was left of Haitis infrastructure etc etc) the poor little lambs at the BBC website needed something to bring their world back into equilibrium. Here it is:

'Doctors in the Iraqi city of Falluja are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8548707.stm

You are welcome! No need to thank us for getting rid of your murderous dictator and spending thousands of our precious soldiers lives getting rid of the murderous islamist scum who tried to fill his political shoes afterwards! Have long, happy peaceful lives as a direct consequence, but don't feel the need to shower us with gratitude, will you?

Hmmm, now where have I heard a story like that before?

2010-03-03T17:28:00.003Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8547621.stm

'Some 90% of farms redistributed to South Africa's black population from white farmers are not productive, the government has said...

...The BBC's Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg says some black farmers are likely to argue that they have been struggling to get the resources and skills to develop their land.'

Question: what mysterious force of nature gave 'the resources and skills' to develop land to white farmers, and equally mysteriously withheld those things from black farmers?

I think we should be told.

I'm racking my brains to remember some great government training scheme for white farmers in Rhodesia or South Africa during apartheid, and my mind is coming up a blank. Or maybe there was a secret army of large-scale farming fairies who went around blessing the farms of white men, while unfairly ignoring black ones.

Could be.

Or maybe white farmers worked extremely hard to garner the relevant knowledge, skills and resources to run large-scale productive farming, and the black ones didn't.

Never underestimate the power of well organised evil

2010-02-28T14:35:00.003Z

Britain if far down the road painted here. Talk about demoralized... fifty nine people showed up at the inaugural British Tea Party... that is one millionth of the population of the country. I keep reading the figure 60% about the US- it is estimated that sixty percent of Americans fundamentally agree with US Tea Party core beliefs. If I were to venture a guess, about 0.5% of Britons agree with those. I have yet to meet one Briton of my generation who shares those core beliefs about the world. The KGB not only knew what they were doing, they have succeeded far beyond their own wildest dreams. So even as Marxism/Leninism has died a painful death in Russia, it is gaining new adherents every day in Britain.

Our schools and universities are awash with marxist/leninists. They feed their potted history of the world to the 'soft brains' and those kids grow up to be demoralised morons, and reiterate their programming at the pub and at work. Even supposed 'Conservatives' in Britian are highly tainted by marxist/leninist ideas. Anti-Americanism, which used to be the default position on the left, is now across the board. Support for the monolithic state bureacracies is very high amongst 'Conservatives', and ignorance of liberal economics is absolutely standard.

Oy vey. The road for a British Tea Party will be long and arduous. I'd say thirty to forty years of hard slog.

What I would say is that the only way it will succeed is to offer people positives, to offer them things which are genuinely better and superior. If the Tea Party is only about what needs to be destroyed (Big Government) and exited (the EU), it will never get beyond 59 people. The Bolsheviks succeeded in gaining mass support by offering people simple goods- bread, freedom from serfdom (ok they lied), jobs. The Tea Party will succeed if it does the same- frame its goals as simple, concrete desirable things.

Who says brainwashing doesn't work?

2010-02-17T22:34:00.001Z

'It is true that most reasonable people concede there has been warming on the planet and that most concede they can't possibly fully understand the underlying science. I certainly can't, despite my best efforts.'
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/17/who-doesnt-trust-science-now

Repeat after me- there has been warming on the planet, there has been warming on the planet, there has been warming on the planet. See! You're getting it now.

There has been warming on the planet, there has been warming on the planet, there has been warming on the planet...

What happened to the lurve?

2010-02-16T17:46:00.004Z

What is weird about this picture? Real Clear Politics is a pretty good barometer of what the pundit world is scratching its head about. So, who is up and who is down? Two stories about Obama, and both negative. Evan Bayh, now an ex-Senator, gets a couple of whumpings for having the temerity to tell the truth and not be a socialist. And two stories about Sarah Palin, private citizen and FOX news contributor.

What does it say exactly when just over a year into the great wondrous Obama reign, the really hot topic is whether Sarah Palin will have what it takes to get elected in ... three years time?

One of my now ex-Friends on Facebook presented her conservative acquaintances with a link to a Facebook group called 'Sarah Palin is a fucking moron'. What happened to the love? What happened to the great healing that the Won was going to bring about when he was elected. Hell, where is the attention span of his great hordes of unwashed acolytes? Their guy is in power, presiding over a government dominated by Democrats, and their attention is on... an ex-Governor of Alaska, and what she is doing this week? Come on people. Buck up.

Rugby traditions are dying

2010-02-16T15:04:00.003Z

Two Rugby players get stinking drunk, find a golf buggy, tear off down the road in it and get pulled for drink driving.

Time was when everybody involved in Rugby, including the WRFU, would have laughed uproarously at this story, the players involved ticked off publicly for the sake of form, and everybody would go straight back to playing rugby.

Now, its like Powell murdered someone.

'Wales team manager Alan Phillips said: "This kind of behaviour cannot be tolerated."

... "This kind of behaviour cannot be tolerated in a professional, elite sporting environment and we have acted quickly and incisively in order to leave no ambiguity over the dim view we take of this situation.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/welsh/8515528.stm

Truly, truly dismal. One by one, the traditions of rugby are disappearing in a murk of prim officialdom, 'professional' attitudes and big money.

Ensuring that the truth is known, loud and clear

2010-02-14T23:36:00.003Z

From the comments

'REN:

I wonder if there will be a slow creep towards the real facts and figures and a general amnesia about the extremes and scare tactics the general public were subjected to. This seems to not be unlike the recent revisionism in the Iraq “success story,” pretending we all knew the truth and were on the “right side” of the issues, all along.

Feb 14, 2010 - 11:56 am'

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-what-did-phil-jones-actually-admit-was-he-correct/2/

Well worth reading the whole article. The Global Warmist cat is well and truly out of the bag. Their bullshit posing as credible science is now well and truly in the spotlight, and starting to look very feeble indeed.

But this comment reminded me of the interview I just watched, by Fox news anchor Chris Wallace interviewing the head of the US National Security Council. He asked him a direct question, whether if Obama and Biden had been in charge when the surge in Iraq was being suggested, whether there would have been any victory in Iraq to celebrate and claim. He played a clip of Obama saying that not only did he believe the surge would make no difference, it would make things worse. So the head of the NSC says 'Oh yes, Iraq is a great victory for America and for whichever administration is in power at the time'. What a load of gilt-edged horseshit. No American with an ounce of knowledge and sense is going to buy that.

Actions matter. And to take the right ones, you have to have knowledge and judgement. As I documented here at the time, President Bush executed the surge over the indignant squeaking of about three quarters of the Pentagon, because he decided on the basis of what he knew that it would succeed, in combination with the Awakening movements and the political progress being made in Baghdad. Would Obama have made the same decision? Absolutely not, as his own words give evidence. Obama would have failed, America would have lost, and untold damage would have been caused. All the lives lost up to that point would have been for nothing.

It is disgusting and repulsive that those idiots are now claiming victory in Iraq, and it must not be allowed to stand.

Twisting in the wind

2010-02-14T19:44:00.002Z

'The Palin shtick has now become the Republican catechism, parroted by every party leader in Washington. Their constant refrain, delivered with cynicism but not irony, is this: Republicans are the anti-big-government, anti-stimulus, anti-Wall Street, pro-Tea Party tribunes of the common folk. “This is about the people,” as Palin repeatedly put it last weekend while pocketing $100,000 of the Tea Partiers’ money.

Incredibly enough, this message is gaining traction.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/opinion/14rich.html?ref=opinion

Er, that isn't Ms Palins schtick. You are doing a dreadful job of watching the news and reading the newspapers, Mr Rich. Nobody with half and eye and a quarter of a brain, leastways Tea Party people, can forget how government and government debt grew under George W Bush. Supported by many Republican encumbents who are at this very moment being fitted for their political funeral clothes. These big government Republicans get booed and shouted down at Tea Parties they are rash enough to attend. But you apparently haven't been paying attention. Tut tut, you man.

'...G.O.P. populism is all bunk, of course. Republicans in office now, as well as Palin during her furtive public service in Alaska, have feasted on federal pork, catered to special interests, and pursued policies indifferent to recession-battered Americans.'

Huh. Ok, you seem desperately intent to tar Sarah Palin with the RINO brush. Do you really think anybody who knows any of the facts is going to buy that? If Sarah Palin had been a porky beast during her time as Governor of Alaska that is all you guys would have talked about during the McCain campaign. And given that you didn't, and had to fall back on bogus flim flam about book burnings, unethical quashing of investigations and her clothes budget, I think we can conclusively deduce that she wasn't. You are right about many other Republicans- pork earmarks are a game everybody can play, and that many of both parties have. Indubitably some special interests have had a deleterious affect on American democracy, and something should be done about that.

You got any ideas Mr Rich? Well, other than replacing Republican special interests with even more voracious and despicable Democrat ones?

'It also shows the power of an incessant bumper-sticker fiction to take root when ineffectually challenged — and, most crucially, the inability of Democrats to make a persuasive case that they offer anything better.'

Oooooh. Dangerous ground. 'Hope and Change' bumper sticker anybody? Do Republicans demagogue better than Democrats? Or is it that most Americans just agree with far more of the Republican core prospectus of God, Country and Family than the Democrat one of Obama, Government and victim tribe? Is it perhaps that they find the Republican prospectus resonates in a thrilling and positive way, while the Democrat one reeks of class division, resentment and murderous rage barely masked?

Nobody does apoplexy better than the Nutroots, and nobody does demagoguic flim flam like the the Democrat leadership. But people have to be willing to buy what you are selling if you are going to close the deal. And the Democrats simply can't.

Not all mobs are the same

2010-02-14T18:51:00.003Z

'Greek firefighters protest government spending cuts on Jan. 29'

'Demonstrators try to burn an EU flag in Athens on Wednesday.'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061172926967984.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hpp_MIDDLESecondNews

Back when the Tea Parties were just starting out, a concerted chorus of Democrat bigwigs immediately slandered them 'They are un-American, rent-a-mob, astroturfer racists'. Based on? Evidence proffered? But it has become evident to everybody, apart from the most extreme partisans, that the Tea Parties are neither a proxy of the Republican party nor some recent incarnation of the secessionist Militias. They are mostly mom and pop USA. They are Mr and Mrs Main Street, common-or-garden working people sick of the way their country is being run into the ground at the speed of a runaway freight train.

Compare and contrast the Greek mobs. Utterly oblivious to straightforward economics, blinded by many decades of Marxist bullshit, selfish, greedy and irrational. Take these paragraphs for instance:

'The issues for troubled euro zone countries are straightforward: Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain (known to the financial markets, and not in a polite way, as the PIIGS) had varying degrees of foreign- and bank credit-financed rapid expansions over the past decade. In fall 2008, these bubbles collapsed.

As custodian of their shared currency, the European Central Bank responded by quietly opening lifelines to all these countries, effectively buying government bonds through special credit windows. Europe's periphery was fragile but surviving on this intravenous line of credit from the ECB until a few weeks ago, when it suddenly became apparent that Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the ECB, and his German backers were finally lining up to cut Greece off from that implicit subsidy. The Germans have become tired of supporting countries that do not, to their minds, try hard enough. Investors naturally flew from Greek debt—Greece's debt yields rose, and its banking system verged near collapse as investors and savers ran from the country.'

Cause followed by effect. Absolutely straightforward. Greece has spent far too much money on its pampered population. The tap has been turned off. And their response? Not humility and shame followed by a resolve to work themselves out of this tight corner. It is to go into the streets, shout stupid slogans and burn EU flags. I already had a very low opinion of Greece, which I consider a Marxist basketcase, but my opinion is heading downhill. Most Germans are probably thinking approximately the same things.

Why should a German worker work until age 69 so a Greek worker can work to 61 and retire on a nice comfy pension? Like an angry teenager whose allowance has been taken away, the Greeks reaction is completely outlandish and negative.

Many of the Tea Party people have gone on record to say, 'We will sacrifice, we will work twice as hard so our children and grandchildren are not saddled with the crippling debt now being accumulated by our government.' Compare and contrast.

My take on the Space debate

2010-02-13T11:13:00.002Z

'By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We're not talking about Mars or the moon here. We're talking about low-Earth orbit, which the U.S. has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper.'

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/12/closing_the_new_frontier_100276.html

I am a huge fan of Charles Krauthammer. I disagree with him very infrequently, but I do disagree with him about NASA. Equating American space efforts solely with NASA is very 20th century and very statist. Just as the NHS totally dominates healthcare provision and the healthcare marketplace in Britain; and the BBC totally dominates broadcasting and the broadcasting marketplace in Britain; NASA has dominated American activities in space. It has sucked up the talent, it has determined the culture of space exploration (extremely risk-averse), it has decided to a very large extent space priorities (science over commercial) and it has made Americans believe that only government has the resources to do things in space.

The Apollo program and the Space shuttle program were both very exciting. But how useful were they? Were they the best use for the gigantic resources poured into them? It is hard to say definitively, but we can say without fear of contradiction that the decision to put resources into them was made by government apparatchiks who had no board of directors or shareholders to answer to. They had no bottom line to worry about. What did the US get out of either the Apollo program or the shuttle? A few hundred KG of moon rocks? Some unbelievably expensive trips into space to deliver satellites which could have been delivered for a thousandth of the cost by an unmanned rocket?

If men are going to go into space, there must be some reason to. There must be some concrete goal, something of value which they will go there for. Like to bring something back to earth of value, some rare metal, or valuable resources. If not, don't go. The original American frontier drew people to its gold, its land and its forests. People didn't populate it because they wanted to do gravitation experiments or better astronomy. Until these obvious but highly neglected truths are given due attention, govenment space programs will continue to be highly wasteful luxuries.

No Tea Party for Britain

2010-02-13T10:57:00.005Z

'these conservative populists do perform the useful function of focusing American political attention on the need for fiscal responsibility. They make a good point, for example, in arguing that we shouldn't add a major new entitlement program for health care until we've figured out how to pay for the entitlement programs we've already got.

Europe, by contrast, lacks this sort of potent conservative movement to constrain government spending.'

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/11/in_europe_time_for_tea_100263.html

Two points. First, they aren't doing a very good job. Why didn't the tea party exist five or six years ago, when George W Bush was passing the legislation for No Child Left Behind? And their effect so far in the Obama era? How come Congress just passed the law allowing the government debt ceiling to be raised by one point something trillion dollars?

Second point, the tea partiers are just average joe people sick of government overreach. I don't know about the rest of Europe, but here in Britain people are in love with enormous government. They are addicted to it. They volunteer for higher taxes. Where are the tea party rank and file going to come from?

Britain is now a wholly owned subsidiary of its government. The free, proud Englishman is a distant memory.

UPDATE

Oh, and the Samizdata blog people, who are allegedly independent-thinking libertarians, are totally uninterested in action. They are windbags happy to sit around and bitch about all the stuff that is wrong, with no apparent desire to go out the door and do something about anything.