This from Jack Kemp (not the politician):

Here are some random thoughts on the McCain victory in Florida:

From Lucianne.com:
http://lucianne.com/threads2.asp?artnum=383287
 
Reply 50 - Posted by: LadyVet, 1/29/2008 9:41:37 PM

The DNC helped McCain by saying that the Florida Dem votes would not count. That left plenty of time (29 days) for Dems to re-register as Republicans so that they could cast a vote that counted. I won't believe McCain until he wins some primaries in the middle of the country that are held on the same day as the Dem primary and are closed, so that Dems can't cross over and vote to skew the results.

This is also probably why Obama did not do as well in Florida. All the anti-Hillary people crossed over to the GOP side, leaving Obama short of votes.

END OF COMMENT

and another poster:

Friends, from the second Lucianne.com thread:
 
"Mickey Kaus said that he could not believe it was possible, in a state where the primary was supposed to be closed, but 17% of independents voted for mccain."
END OF QUOTE
 
I could say that this probably included Democrats, but I suspect a majority were really independents. If this is the voter mix for general elections in America today - and if this gets repeated on SuperTuesday and beyond, we're in for a rough 4-8 years.

I have another factor in why McCain won.
 
I was just talking with someone who has elderly religious Southern parents retired in Florida. They and their friends were inclined to vote for Huckabee, but after he made that remark in South Carolina about those who opposed the flying of the Confederate flag could shoving that flag you-know-where, he lost a lot of voters who switched to McCain. So Huckabee support eroded and he wasn't able to take a number of votes away from McCain, also hurting Mitt Romney. Once again, this is anecdotal, and I don't travel in fundamentalist Christian circles in the South, but this makes sense.

Finally, there is this to consider:

Florida Election Follies

In January of 2007, the Tampa Tribune reported thousands of Florida Democrats switched their party affiliation to Republican, not because of any desire to elect the most liberal Republican they could find, but because they were angry that the national Democratic Party had punished the state for holding an early primary. http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jan/05/me-thousands-of-voters-change-party-affiliation/

To quote from the article:

'For some switchers, the DNC penalty prompted them to move to the Republican Party. The national GOP’s spanking wasn’t quite so heavy-handed. Florida Republicans will lose half of their convention delegates for jumping ahead in the calendar.

``Having my vote count for half of something is better than voting for nothing``, said Jerry Johnson, 56, a retired chef who switched his registration Dec. 28 - from Democrat to Republican - at a Seminole Heights public library.

That made Johnson one of at least 1,216 Democrats in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties to switch to the GOP since Aug. 25.'

Now these three are relatively low population counties in a state with over sixty counties, so you can multiply these numbers by 40 or better. Now a typical party switcher such as Jerry Johnson, who has voted Democratic all his life, is not going to show up at the  polling place with a Rush Limbaugh t-shirt and a copy of Newt Gingrich's latest book under his arm. He is going to vote for the Republican candidate who most resembles his voting and thinking patterns of a lifetime. In a primary contest highlighting John McCain vs. Mitt Romney, he would be most likely to vote for McCain.

Once again, Florida has messed up the process. There were no hanging chads. Just Changing Chads. As the 2001 bumper sticker said, "Florida. If you don't like the way we count, get on I-95 and move to one of the other 56 states."

I honestly don't want to claim this was a conspiracy cooked up by Florida Democratic officials, with the help of Bill and Hillary. It just could have evolved that way out of Floridians being Floridians. But once the registration switching was in place, any professional politician, from Sen. Clinton to Sen. McCain, could have realized the possibilities.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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by Jack Kemp (not the politician):

When John McCain gave his Florida victory speech, he said he is a "Republican conservative" and stood fast to our convictions "like Ronald Reagan." http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video_log/2008/01/mccains_florida_victory_speech.html
Say what?
 
Most readers here are familiar with the standard list of McCain's siding with liberals on votes and issues. They are detailed in literally hundred articles in newspapers and on the Internet.
 
McCain-Feingold. McCain-Kennedy. McCain-Lieberman. McCain-Belzeebub.
 
McCain's Florida victory speech was clearly stretching the truth - like a bungee cord - when he called himself a conservative and a Reaganite. To require him to explain how, exactly, his new rhetoric reconciles with his voted-for positions would be agonizing - nay, torture. Wait. That's it. Since McCain is against torture (using his definition), forcing him to explain his outlandish statements would be a violation of the Geneva Convention. Therefore his position against "torture" really means, by McCainesque logic, no politician - particularly himself - can be made to feel uncomfortable by answering for their inconsistencies and exaggerations. And outright lies. Because that would be tantamount to torture.
 
Now I understand McCain. I wish I didn't have to.
 
Jack

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When Romney Care was proposed and all the Dims were going ga-ga over it, I knew it would fail.

Anytime government gets in the act the commodity becomes more expensive and scarce.

As the saying goes, If you think healthcare is expensive, wait till it is free.

Wil Wirtanen

Saying No to CoerciveCare
By SHIKHA DALMIA
January 31, 2008

On Monday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's "universal" health-care plan was shot down by a committee in the state's Senate, 7-1. The most vociferous opponents were not fiscal conservatives, but labor unions that launched a last-minute revolt against its most crucial feature: an individual mandate that would have forced everyone to buy coverage.

This defeat has national political implications. Hillary Clinton, for example, has denounced Barack Obama for refusing to include an individual mandate in his health-care plan. Yet many California unions argued that a mandate would force uninsured, middle-income working families to divert money from more pressing needs toward coverage whose price and quality they cannot control.

The unions are correct: This is exactly what is happening in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney enacted a similar plan two years ago as governor. (And Mr. Romney's plan is the inspiration for both the Schwarzenegger and Clinton plans.) The experience in the Bay State deserves a lot more scrutiny than it has been getting.

Massachusetts uses a sliding income scale to subsidize coverage for everyone up to 300% of the poverty level -- or a family of four making around $60,000. Everyone over that limit is required to pay for their own coverage if their employers don't provide it. All this has inflated demand, which, combined with onerous regulations on insurance suppliers, has triggered premium increases of 12% for this year -- double last year's national average.

No one is escaping the financial sting. The state health-care bill for fiscal 2008-2009 is expected to touch $400 million -- 85% more than originally projected. Still the state won't be able to fully shield those it subsidizes from the premium increases. But uninsured folks who don't qualify for government help really get pounded. Before the hike, the cheapest plan for uninsured couples in their 50s cost $8,200 annually. Now, unless government bureaucrats hand them an exemption, they might well find it cheaper to pay the penalty -- up to half the price of a standard policy -- than purchase insurance. That is, pay to remain uninsured. This is legalized extortion: TonySopranoCare.

The government response to rising premiums is, unsurprisingly, price controls. The Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority -- the bureaucracy created to oversee RomneyCare -- is considering prohibiting underwriters from raising premiums more than 5% for unsubsidized plans, meanwhile requiring them to cover 40-odd benefits from hair prostheses to chiropractic services. If companies can't scale back coverage, they'll have to compromise care; and the Connector is perfectly willing to assist.

As reported in the Boston Globe, the Connector is encouraging insurance companies to include only a limited network of cheaper physicians and facilities in some plans to hold down premiums. Patients who wish to see more expensive providers will have to dig into their own pockets. Dr. Steffie Wollhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, worries that the Connector will revive Gov. Romney's original idea of enrolling poor people in plans that only offer access to neighborhood health centers ill-equipped to treat anything beyond routine ailments. Forcing people to buy substandard care they cannot afford is not universal care, she says. "It is a hoax." And so Massachusetts is marching toward a system of two-tiered medicine -- the alleged market inequity that universal care is supposed to cure.

How about enforcing the mandate? In Massachusetts, non-compliers lose their personal tax exemption -- about $220 -- the first year, followed by fines in subsequent years. California was planning to garnish the wages or impose liens on the mortgages of the uninsured to pay for coverage. "This bill was like telling someone who is in need of help, 'I'm going to give you food, but I'm going to take away your clothes," Leland Yee, a Democratic senator from San Francisco, told the California Chronicle.

The problems with RomneyCare have prompted Mr. Romney himself to abandon it. And Mr. Obama is surely correct that part of the reason 45 million Americans are uninsured is not that no one is forcing them to buy it, but that they can't afford it. It may be too much to hope that Mr. Obama would embrace market-oriented measures -- such as deregulating insurance markets, giving patients more control over their health care dollars, and fixing the federal tax code to let individuals, like employers, buy health coverage with pre-tax dollars -- to bring down insurance costs. But unlike Mrs. Clinton, he at least seems to understand the perverse side effects of an individual mandate.

Should Hillary Clinton ever be in a position to bully people into buying coverage, a coalition of labor and fiscal conservatives might well do to HillaryCare what it just did to GovernatorCare.

Ms. Dalmia is a senior analyst at the Reason Foundation.

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A discussion about anti-Semitism and the Left`s perverse hatred of Israel has erupted (well, started, at any rate) over a blogpost by Abe Greenwald at Contentions (the blogsite for Commentary).  The principle bone of Contention this time is the eternal question of why the ever-compassionate Left hates Israel and, by extension, Jews.

Of course, this dovetails with my article at the American Thinker Paradise Lost; Why the Left Loves Muhammed. A commenter suggested that white guilt was at the root of the liberal bias against Israel, and I agreed, while another commenter dissented, saying it was age-old anti-Semitism.  Actually, they are both right; the anti-Semitism is age old, but it is fueled and supercharged by white guilt, which is used to hook in the empty-headed young idealists who become the rabid Left.  Anti-Semitism is, indeed, an ancient and venerable tradition, but it would die were it not renewed with each generation, and I do not think that the Left`s viewpoint would stand, considering that there are Jewish people at the extreme Left as surely as there are Irish or Italians or Germans; something has made this hatred surface.

Jonah Goldberg has given us part of the answer; the modern Left is the heir to twentieth century Fascism (or, in this case, Nazism) and hatred of the Jew is inextricably woven into the fabric of their worldview. The failure of pure materialism i.e. Marxism at the end of the last century left the far Left in a lurch, and they have migrated into the next best thing-National Socialism.  They maintain a sort of spirituality, a mystical outlook on their movement and their belief in Globalism rather than in the Nation and the Volk, and their vision of a primeval paradise stolen by Western Civilization.  Environmentalism, Secular Humanism, Darwinism, Collectivism, Globalization are all articles of faith to the radical Left, and they provide the spiritual component that the Fascist/Nazi precursers supplied with their mystical vision of the State. 

The hatred of the Judeo-Christian ``rape of paradise``, the rise to dominance of Western culture and Western tradition over indigenous peoples and ways is at the root of the modern Left`s hatred of Judaism; Jews were the moral and spiritual cornerstone of Western culture.  Jewish Law is at the root of what they believe is a stifling moral code, one which is at odds with what they see as freedom and we see as licence.  The Left sees any restrictions on the fulfillment of their personal desires as somehow restricting freedom, and they will oppress anyone who gets in the way of that personal fulfillment, since the most grievous sin is ``judgementalism``-claiming that there is an objective moral code. Those rotten Jews gave the West that moral code with the Ten Commandments and the Law; they are truly the root of all evil to Leftist thinking. 

Sin is an artificial concept to the Left, since there is no God and Man is the ultimate authority.  Liberalism is all about freeing human passions from restraint.  Liberals believe that the source of all suffering in this world stems from an artificial suppression of of these natural impulses (read Freud, for example) since Man is inherently good.  Paradise is attainable in the perceptual world if Man can be restored to harmony with nature.  Jews and Christians tell them this isn`t so, much to their rage.

The creation of the state of Israel was a truly abominable act by Leftist standards; a Western system was forced onto a benign, more naturalistic order. Oppressed third world peoples were once again ground under the European heel, and an Islamic one at that; the Moslem is not encumbered with rationalism, with a government divided from the religious order, with a state where Man is not ``whole``.  They see rationalism as bad because it denies the passions, the emotions, the sense of oneness with nature.  They hate the way Western Civilization has divided so many functions such as government and religion, economics and scholarship; theirs is a monolithic vision for humanity, one in which all things are melded into a seamless whole.  Western Civilization is the enemy to the Left, and the imposition on a non-Western people is completely unacceptable.

How could the Left not be anti-Semitic?  The Israelites were the fathers of everything they despise.

As to white guilt, that is one of the hooks used to seduce recruits to their side, along with pride (``you`re one of the smart people now``), compassion (``you CARE``), and the freedom from the restraint of passion; why are left-wing blogsites so full of fury and profanity?  They will not tolerate any suppression of their beastial natures, and this is a powerful draw to the rebellious young.

At any rate, everyone should read Abe Greenwald`s piece, and should visit Commentaries in general; it`s a site aimed primarily at Jews, but there is something for everyone. 

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The Japanese used to say that Korea was a daggar pointed at the heart of Japan, and a casual glance at a map illustrates exactly why they believed this; the Strait of Korea is only about 100 miles wide, with islands making it easy to hopscotch across.  It was the logical route any invader-including the Japanese, who drove the native Ainu people north onto Hokkaido-would take. 

In warfare or in a competitive peace, position is critical, as the Japanese point out.  When the Allied lines bulged after the D-Day invasion, the Germans hit the bulge with everything they had (and had the misfortune of running into the 101st Airborn who happened to be on R and R in the precise spot they chose to strike) to break the Allied lines. 

That is why the Israelis have been so foolish in their attempts to make peace with the Palestinians; they have traded away strategic positions, Real Property for a promise of peace, and weakened the defensibility of their nation as a result.

That is why I found this piece by David Hazony at Commentary so interesting; he rebuts an argument made by commentator A.B. Yehoshua, who argues that surrendering the Gaza Strip would be a sound military manuever.

According to the article:

The logic of unilateral withdrawal, accepted by many Israelis, goes something like this. We tried occupying the land; that didn't work. Then we tried giving it away in a negotiated settlement, and we got a terror war. Anyway, we really don't like the Palestinians all that much, so why don't we just pull out unilaterally? That will really freak them out. Worst-case scenario, they attack us anyway, but at least then it won't be our fault, and we can slam them militarily in good conscience.

Unlike Britain, Israel is not actually a colonial power; after a certain point, it has nowhere to withdraw to. This is the great fallacy of the Palestinian cause -- the hope that, given enough violence, the Jews will just go back to wherever it was they came from. It's a shame that eminent Israelis like Yehoshua continue to give them reason to believe they are right.

Mr. Hazony has called it correctly; if you feed the pidgeons in the yard they will end up roosting on your house.  The nature of human aggression is such that attempts to placate inevitably lead to further acts of aggression.  Consider Hitler; he admitted that, when he made his first move against France, the French could have stopped him any time they liked.  They CHOSE not to stop his troops from marching into the Ruhr Valley (which they had occupied in 1923 in reprisal for Germany`s failure to make reperation payments) and remilitarizing the region.  This failure proved lethal; the Third Reich metastasized in military power after that critical failure of French will, and Hitler would soon overrun Europe.  Another example is the Barbary Pirates; they extorted money out of Europe and America, and continually demanded more.  The United States kept increasing payments to the Tripolitanian thieves until one tenth of the fledgeling republic`s annual budget went to buy off the scoundrels. America had little choice; bankruptcy or fight.  The much stronger European powers could have fought any time they wanted, but were too interested in maintaining ``peace``.

History is littered with the bodies of those who died fighting wars that could have been prevented or greatly reduced had their leaders not practiced appeasement. Iraq is the latest example; had the U.N. enforced her resolutions against Saddam with guns instead of butter, the U.S. invasion would have been unnecessary, or we would have been able to go in with much more support, greatly shortening the ``insurgency`` by giving the terrorists no hope of victory.  The protracted struggle in Iraq was a direct result of irresolution by the world community and divisiveness inside America.

By surrendering the ``occupied territories`` Israel is sending a signal to Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, all of her enemies that she can be dismantled piecemeal. 

Granted, holding territory isn`t everything; the British learned that during the American Revolution.  They held the center of the rebellion-Boston, they took New York, they briefly took Philadelphia, yet General Howe would never strike a fatal blow to Washington`s army or the rebels in general because they could take to the countryside, resupply through friendly farmers, get their intelligence from locals.  Washington`s principle strategy was a game of hide-and-seek with the eastern half of an entire continent-a largely unsettled continent-as their game-field. 

Things are different in Gaza.  The Israelis have actually settled there, living among the Palestinians.  They are not just an invading army but a group of settlers, and the terrorist attacks are just that. Surrendering the so-called Palestinian regions is not going to end the attacks.

A casual glance at a map of Israel shows the military threat posed by a unilateral withdrawl; Jerusalem lies between Gaza and the West Bank, and any sort of terror operation would be easy to employ if the Israeli security forces were no longer there to hamper efforts.  Weapons could be moved openly, training camps established, intelligence sweeps made. The terrorists cannot do that now, because the Israeli settlers are watching.  It is much easier to prepare in the open than under wraps.

That is why I quoted the Japanese proverb; the Gaza Strip is a dagger pointed at the heart of Israel, at least from a military standpoint.

While we are on the subject of Oriental warfare, Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu said that the greatest victory is the on unfought, and a unilateral withdrawl is handing an unfought victory to the enemies of Israel.  Any good general will understand that for what it is, and press an attack.

The idea of unilateral withdrawl is folly in the extreme.  Do those who advocate this path really believe that a military conflict will follow? Do they think for a minute that international pressure will not be brought to bear on Israel when they use military weapons on the Palestinians?  The U.N. WILL intervene at that point.

The whole Israeli/Palestinian conflict stems from Islamic aggression; they refused to accept the loss of ``their`` territory to ``Zionist Crusaders`` and attempted to drive the nascent Israel into the sea. Israel grew instead of shrunk, and every attempt to destroy Israel has resulted in the growth of Israeli territory.  The Palestinians are simply the employment of guerilla tactics and the utilization of victimology-the bane of the modern West.  This is not and never has been about giving the poor Palestinians a fair shake; it is about driving out the non-Islamic ``invaders``.

Here are some quotes from visitors to Palestine pre-Israel:

Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. [English pilgrim in 1590]

Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell a handful of philosophic people in wasted sun-drenched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea."
Winston Churchill

The coming of the Jews to this land made it blossom, and redoubled the covetousness of those who had so neglected it.  Ottoman rule had turned it to a waste, and the Palestinians were servants brought in to tend the private estates of Ottoman sheiks.  They were not indiginous to the region, and their claim is no stronger than the Israelis to the land. Contrary to what they claim, the Palestinians are not the decendents of the Canaanites.

Israel would be quite foolish to unilaterally surrender any more territory.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Climatologist Roy Spencer makes a terrific point in the Federalist Patriot:

Once the government gains control over energy decisions, do we really think they will relinquish it after manmade global warming is realized to be a false alarm? It has been said that whoever controls energy, controls life. Right now, the free market (which means you) controls those decisions. Do we need to remind ourselves how well things went in the former Soviet Union when the bureaucrats made the economic decisions, rather than letting the collective will of the people, expressed though a free market, govern the economy?... What will people do when they realize that going along with the 56-percent scientific majority has resulted in them giving up much of their personal freedom in the process? I wouldn’t trade that freedom for any presidential candidate.
End Quote

One measure of wealth is energy usage; the more energy available to a society the wealthier it becomes.  Control of wealth by the Government is the goal of Socialism, and therefore the ultimate end of energy regulation whether it be conservation efforts to fight international terrorism or emission restrictions to fight Global Warming are a socialized economy. The stated reasons may not be socialism, and for many the goal itself may not be socialism, but the end result will be socialism, or at least a quasi-socialist form similar to Fascism.  Control energy and you control the economy, control the economy and you control the individual.  Putting our use and production of energy under the thumb of the government is the fabian path to dictatorship.

I am mindful of the Book of Revelation:

``And that no man may buy or sell, save he that have the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name`` Rev13:16-17

What is the means of control imposed by the beast?  Control of the economy means control of the individual, and John the Divine illustrates that clearly with this passage.  Whether one believe in the New Testament or not, it should at least be obvious that John understood the power of economic domination even as far back as the first century. 

It is especially true of modernity, where energy is so important to running our industries.  Medieval man had little energy usage (and few valuable possessions he did not make for himself) and the totalitarianism of the beast was not possible based on control of energy.  Not so now, where everything we have is made by someone else-often someone far removed from us.  Energy is required for every stitch of clothing, every comfort, all of our food, all of our medicinal needs, our heat in winter, our transportation, everything.  Control energy and you control the individual almost completely in this modern era. 

By making every human activity subject to government regulation-which is what control of CO2 emissions essentially does-we are handing government totalitarian authority in the interest of ``saving the planet`` something which the planet simply does not need.  As Dr. Spencer asks, do we really want to offer this type of authority to government based on a plurality of relatively uninformed opinion?  I say uninformed because we understand so little of what is happening, and the predictions made by these spiffy computer models are suspect, to put it mildly.  Are we prepared to fundamentally overhaul our economic system based on what may turn out to be junk science?

Tyrants never simply seize power; there is a preperatory period which sets the stage for their emergence.  By accepting the right of government to regulate energy and emissions, we are setting that stage.  Is this wisdom?

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I couldn`t have said it any better myself:

For a couple of hundred years, foreigners have been flocking to the shores of this most welcoming of nations. They would bring along their art and music along with their cuisine, but they adapted their ways in order that their children and their children s children would acclimate and be full-fledged Americans... But somewhere along the way, there was a sea change. Now we have that oddest of strange creatures known as the dual citizen and we have millions of people living here who apparently have no particular loyalty to this country and are being encouraged to retain their own language and their old ways. ‘Press one for Spanish, two for English’ has become commonplace. Teenagers who have never even set foot in Mexico, Salvador and Guatemala, demonstrate in our streets while carrying foreign flags, and we re all supposed to respect them or be labeled as bigots and xenophobes. American citizens who are being taxed to death to support illegal aliens are called racists if they object to footing the bill for health care and education for millions of freeloading ingrates who insist they re only reclaiming land that is rightfully theirs. On top of all that, our kids are being brainwashed in their schools into accepting that the only truly evil society on the face of the earth isn t North Korea, Iran, China or Syria, but their own...

Burt Prelutsky

Muchos Gracias to the Federalissimo Patriot

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From Jack Kemp (not the politician):

Since the topic is the Democratic Presidential campaign, let us see if the Clinton tactics pass John Kerry's "global test."

In Der Spiegel it states:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,531598-3,00.html

"But Bill Clinton isn't allowing himself to be reined in that easily. Like many other veterans of political campaigns, he is familiar with the research of psychologist Drew Westen, who demonstrated that emotions, not the issues, are what decide elections. Westen is convinced that to succeed, a candidate must be able to stimulate both positive and negative emotions -- in other words, affection and hatred.

Destroying the Niceness Myth

Westen has a low opinion of polite restraint as a campaign tactic. He writes that it is a widespread myth among Democrats that negative campaigning -- attacking a rival's integrity -- is unethical, ineffective and, if practiced by an adversary, better left unanswered.

This sort of reasoning makes someone like Bill Clinton prick up his ears. When he met Westen for the first time at a Democratic Party convention, Clinton was already familiar with -- and an admirer of -- Westen's theories. A few months later, Westen received a call on his mobile phone while he was sitting in a Starbucks in Atlanta.

The friendly female voice on the other end asked Westen if he was available to speak with the former president of the United States. It was Bill Clinton, who immediately picked up their last conversation where it had left off. He wanted to learn about Westen's theories, Clinton said. For the next 30 minutes, Westen, walking back and forth on the street in front of the Starbucks, explained the essence of his message. Westen told Clinton that when a political candidate discusses his opponent, he must be willing to say the things that the public already thinks -- but hasn't yet dared to express."

END OF QUOTE

Prof. Westen's ideas are similar to the viewpoint voiced in the 2005 stock market decision/psychology book "Mean Markets and Lizard Brains" by Terry Burnham. Burnham, who holds a PhD in business economics from Harvard, states that the idea of people basing their decisions on emotions dates from the work of Professors Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the late 1970s. 

But these discussions of the all the aforementioned professors don't fully take into consideration reality-testing by the voter, i.e., comparison by the voter/decison maker of the emotional appeal by a candidate to what the voter knows experientially from their own lives and what they remember from following political events for a number of years. Not being a physiological psychologist or behavioral economist myself, I can't tell you what hemisphere of the brain that processes this, but it is obviously stored in the voters' memories. The comparison of an emotional appeal vs. what we know was once characterized by a Village Voice political article as our "built-in b.s. detector."

This political discussion of appealing to emotions by going negative to appeal to emotion, like the advice of senior Clinton advisor Mark Penn, treat negativity as an end in itself, conveniently dovetailing with Saul Alinksy's polarization tactics. But, once again, people bring into use their life experience and their "built-in b.s. detector" when listening to a political appeal - and when they detect lying, the message has the opposite of the desired effect. Realistically, voters expect some degree of "shading the truth" from a politician, but do not want to vote for a politician whose definition of "shade" is the total absence of light and truth. The theoretical academic discussion of going negative, while having its points, ignores people's perceptions of the truth (no wonder Bill Clinton telephoned the professor) and is arguably a de facto approval of lying. But the risk in lying today in the Information Age is that your opponents, the news media, the bloggers and the general public can more easily discover a candidate's (or their spouse's) lying and widely voice a refuting argument with the accompanying loss of votes. The effectiveness of going negative - with lies - can quickly be changed into an autoimmune attack, i.e., negativity against oneself as the candidate.

Advertisers know that even with the best of their arts and skill, an inferior product that doesn't live up to expectations will not generate high sales. You can't make a silk purse from an Arkansas razorback's ear.

Who - in the general public (myself included) would have believe we would see Democratic Senator Obama, a lifelong liberal, being attacked by "the best politician of his age" for supposedly agreeing with the politics of Ronald Reagan? Who would believe Bill Clinton's negative claim that Sen. Obama, a Harvard law school graduate, who won many more white votes than Jesse Jackson in South Carolina, is "merely" a black candidate? And who would have believed two weeks ago that Bill Clinton would insult the black community - publicly - in such a manner?

During the Fred Thompson campaign, I learned a great Southern saying concerning people's character revealing itself over time. It goes like this: what's down in the well, comes up in the bucket. And if the Clinton's campaign continues in the same manner, it just might kick the bucket.

Jack Kemp

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Alan Roebuck had another great piece on atheism and theism at the American Thinker this weekend. Titled ``How to Respond to a Supercilious Atheist`` Mr. Roebuck gives a few pointers on dealing with the aggressive atheist by asking questions he cannot answer.

Here is a snippet:

But before you start showing them the evidence, consider: Most aggressive atheists say "I would be willing to believe in God if there were any evidence that He exists, but no such evidence exists, so I don't believe."  No matter what evidence you give, the supercilious atheist finds a way to dismiss it.  To him, it is not the case that your evidence for God is valid but nevertheless is cancelled out by his superior evidence against God.  No, in the atheist's mind your evidence does not even count as evidence. And therefore your reasoning has no effect on his thinking, other than to confirm to him that you are irrational.

And when he says that naturalistic (that is, atheistic) science provides the more plausible explanation for the entire history of the universe since the Big Bang, ask him: "How do you know that a super-naturalistic explanation, involving a God who intervenes from time to time, cannot be the correct explanation?  Wouldn't one have to be, for all intents and purposes, omniscient in order to know that God could not have been involved?"

****************end excerpt*********************

This is a most rewarding and intellectually stimulating piece, well worth a read.

Also at the Thinker this weekend was a piece by Miguel A. Guanipa that dovetails with the points made by Mr. Roebuck, which discusses the modern moralists (or a-moralists, if you prefer) who use evolution to promote a morality-free Utopia. 

From the article:

In today's progressive milieu, the evolutionary psychologist is the anointed high priest to the morally disoriented masses. This new breed seeks to "dissect our moral intuitions", while he hides behind the seemingly unbiased pretext that he is called to merely examine phenomena, not extract moral principles from it. Thus he swiftly reduces our moral quintessence to the presumably unmerited status of glorified simians. Such is the setting in which Harvard University professor Steven Pinker (a zealous advocate of Evolutionary Psychology) finds himself in his element.

Steven Pinker may long for emancipation from the bondage of a transcendent moral code, but behavior that discreetly violates unseen moral laws has its consequences. And the utopian dream which Pinker alludes to, in which we are summarily shielded from the consequences of our choices, i.e. in which our choices do not matter, yields a universe in which there is no real freedom.

**************end excerpt**************

A note from Tim:

You know, one of the more fascinating things I have encountered when arguing with atheists is their dual vision; they claim that nothing exists beyond that which can be touched, seen, heard, smelled, or tasted yet they argue that reality is subjective, that everyone has their personal reality which is different to each of us and thus we can make no moral judgements.  In short, they argue that they know nothing, and should be dismissed for their lack of knowledge, since all knowledge is subjective.  I can point out that, for me and most people, God is real and therefore they have no business arguing against His existence. 

Moral Relativism is based on the Heisenberg Principle in quantum physics; we cannot know all aspects of an atomic particle because our act of measuring changes the conditions.  Atheists and others who chafe under the yoke of moral absolutism have applied this principle to the human condition, claiming that there is no concrete reality so we cannot pass any sort of judgement on another. This has, of course, lead to the ridiculous situation we find ourselves in whereby we are afraid to ``judge`` anyone for anything, thus opening the door to anarchy in our society.  Of course, the relativisist judge all the time, particularly those who attempt to maintain moral standards.  The worst crime is judgementalism to the relativist, yet the relativist is engaging in moral absolutism in so judging the absolutist. 

The truth is that those who hype this tripe are quite absolutist in their own fashion, and would repress those who ``live in a different reality`` if that reality means holding free moral agents to account. Much of the bile and hatred that comes from the ``supercillious atheists`` devolves from that fact.  It is strictly a matter of who`s ox is being gored.

In fact, if naturalism is correct and there is nothing outside of the material and observable, then they have no right to complain about moral or spiritual issues.

Of course, they will do precisely that on any number of levels.  I suspect that most atheist men would not be happy to learn their wives were cheating on them, even if care was taken to avoid pregnancy and venereal disease.  Why?  She is exercising her moral reality, after all.  Most would not wish to be cheated in a business deal, or unfairly denied promotion, or held back in any way, yet this is precisely what the moral relativists are ultimately arguing, that reality is different and those with the power to exercise their vision have the right to have things their way. 

Oh, and about God; what right does any atheist have to complain about God or those who worship Him? 

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Apologies for light blogging; I had a busy weekend.  My wife`s birthday is next week, and we went to a wine and food expo at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel to celebrate.  The Expo included a huge assortment of wines, food a-plenty, and cooking demonstrations by television chefs, including Father Dominick from Breaking Bread and a well known vegan chef (whose name I don`t remember). The chefs were filming for their shows, and the vegan chef kept trying to rouse the crowd, who had been there for hours and were a little numb. 

At any rate,weI ate, drank, and made merry.  We spent the night in the hotel (which is absolutely breathtaking) and had our own suite of rooms with cable television-always a treat.

The next day we decided to go to brunch at the St. Louis Gasthehous-one of the last remaining German restaurants in the City. I remembered too late why we never go to brunch buffetts; I was stuffed worse than the knockwurst they were serving.

The last movie we had actually attended was Apocalypto, so we decided to go to dinner and a movie in the evening.  We went to Crestwood Mall and ate in a local restaurant and saw the action/horror movie Cloverfield.  I had heard it was entertaining and it was, but I am prone to seasickness and to watch a movie shot with a handheld camera about a Godzilla-like monster destroying New York was less than wise.  I thought the movie was scary.  My wife (who quite possibly holds a record for scary movies) was nonplussed.  Of course, we had to have popcorn with butter, making the up-and-down of the movie even worse.

In short, I could barely drag myself up this morning. I feel like I`ve swallowed several bowling balls.

I should be back on track with blogging this week.  Again, I apologize for not being on top of my game. 

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Another from the non-politician Jack Kemp:

Y'all remember the Dixie Chicks. Their lead singer Natalie Maines made worldwide made headlines in 2003 by stating at a concert in London that they were "ashamed the President of the US is from Texas." http://www.tabloidcolumn.com/dixie-chicks.html
 
Having entered into the world of international diplomacy and political commentary, Natalie Maines followed up this remark in September, 2006 with this analysis:http://www.tmz.com/2006/09/12/dixie-chicks-to-bush-youre-a-dumb-f-k/
 
'Now, the embattled country stars are reigniting the blaze with a highly controversial documentary featuring lead singer Natalie Maines calling President Bush a "dumb f---." '
 
So I'm wondering where is Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks when former President Clinton calls Sen. Obama a "hit man," compares him to Jessie Jackson, http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/01/bubba-obama-is.html , insults blacks by falling asleep on the dais at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day speech, and calls the Obama campaign a "fairy tale"?
 
And where is Ms. Maines when Hillary refers to Obama as not having done the "spadework" to be president, a highly racially charged insulting term? http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/01/hillary_spadework_and_democrat.html
 
Surely, the Dixie Chicks, who have the courage to speak their mind, must have political and social advice for the rest of us on the Clinton's campaign controversies and the shamefulness or lack thereof in the Clintons' remarks. We await word of their wisdom and insight on this subject.
 
Jack

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More from our friend Jack Kemp:

The South Carolina primary, with its rejection of Bill Clinton, even among whites, is over. But Bill Clinton's pathologies roll on to the next state(s).
 
Just when you thought Bill Clinton couldn't get much lower, while answering an unrelated question, he compares Sen. Obama to Jesse Jackson in South Carolina.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/01/bubba-obama-is.html
What was more telling was a reply on Lucianne.com:
 
http://www.lucianne.com/threads2.asp?artnum=382793
 
Reply 2 - Posted by: eliza, 1/26/2008 10:02:27 PM

This is scary; Bill is inciting a race war. It's OUT THERE. Even the most devoted of Clinton Kool Aid drinkers are gonna recoil at this.

END OF QUOTE

Eliza is right. Bill Clinton wants to appeal to the basest instincts he can stir up. Perhaps the remark about Jesse Jackson didn't stoop to the level of trying to start a race war, but it is definitely headed in that direction. This is pure Saul Alinsky radical tactics, as Kyle-Anne Shriver has pointed out at American Thinker, but Bill Clinton's latest antics introduce something we haven't seen in this country in a presidential campaign since the Dixiecrats in 1948 and Adlai Stevenson having segregationist Sen. John Sparkman as his vice presidential running mate in 1952.

I've said this before: Clinton is the political protege of Sen. William Fulbright, the arch segregationist. Perhaps Bill will hand out ax handles at the polling sites during the next primaries, as one segregationist politician, whose name escapes me, did in the early 1960s. Yes, the American public today overwhelmingly rejected Bill Clinton's messages in South Carolina, but I'm sick of looking at him run his naked id through the streets and television screens of America. The Clintons are playing the race card so hard (and not understanding today's America, in my opinion), that their appeal is only to that fraction of white voters who want to now shoot it out with the black population in a modern version of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

I hope that upcoming primary voting results will verify what I am about to say: Bill Clinton has lost the Decent Americans vote - from either party - for both him and his wife. I - and I suspect many others - want our country taken back from the Clintons.

Jack Kemp

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by Jack Kemp (not the politician):

 
Has any candidate, be they Democrat or Republican, made the case that drilling for - and finding - US oil would lower our inflation rates? More oil the US found would first of all, lower the de facto "tax at the pump" on all drivers and even urban resident non-car owners who have their food and other necessities delivered by oil powered vehicles. Secondly, the money made available to the economy would be a great stimulus. Rush Limbaugh also proposed this week a federal gas tax cut, effective immediately, as a much quicker way to stimulate the economy.
 
The more money that goes overseas to pay for oil, the worse the support is for the US Dollar. This isn't rocket science, but we have reached a point where voters don't believe that government officials of either party want anything else than turning the rest of us into 21st Century serfs. That's why the candidacies of Dunkan Hunter, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee - and even Dennis Kucinich even existed. And that is why the Republican party - and possibly the Democrats behind their public face - are in such disarray: people don't believe their "leaders" care about their future.
 
Jack

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This from the Federalist Patriot:

If Western civilization falls, one of the root causes will be political correctness. Sadly, even the Pentagon is now infected. Major Stephen Coughlin, a lawyer and reserve military intelligence officer, is the Pentagon’s sole specialist on Islamic law, providing senior military officers with information on Islamic jihad doctrine. Considering that we are in fact fighting jihadis, that’s not a bad idea. If you recall, one of the initial, and valid, criticisms of the U.S. military after we went on the offensive was that we knew little to nothing about the enemy we were fighting. Unfortunately, Major Coughlin’s contract with the military ends in March because he has hurt the PC sensibilities of a key aide to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. The name of that key aide? Why, it’s Commander Hesham Islam, an Egyptian-born Muslim. Commander Islam has confronted Major Coughlin and told him to ``soften his views of Islamist extremism``, and the PC crowd at the Pentagon is willing to go along and throw Major Coughlin under the PC bus. No doubt the message will be received by others, who may now think twice before speaking the truth about Islam. So, Commander Islam (shudder) now dictates what our military leaders will hear about our jihadi enemies. Sheer stupidity.

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One of the things which sunk the Republican party in the last election was their unwillingness to control the borders.  President Bush`s ``comprehensive reform`` was obviously nothing but amnesty then business as usual, and the public understood that clearly.  After the fiasco in `06 the Republicans STILL tried to ram that abomination down our throats, illustrating perfectly that they are completely out of touch with the voting public.

We`re still waiting for the fence-Duncan Hunter is still trying to get that for us.  This from the Federalist Patriot:

Former presidential candidate Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) reintroduced the Secure Fence Act Wednesday, which mandates construction of double-layered fencing along the U.S. /Mexico border within six months, something that the Homeland Security Department has been apparently loath to do. ``Today, DHS has built approximately 75 miles of new fence along the border, of which only five miles is double-layered``, Hunter said. ``The Secure Fence Act was clear in that it required double-layered fencing, separated by a road for Border Patrol vehicles, extending over 700 miles of land border.``

The Grand Oaf Party has obviously not learned their lesson, and this president is still actively campaigning for the title ``The Man Who Wrecked the Republicans``.  We don`t want Aunschluss with Mexico, we don`t care about cheap labor, we want to be asked to be charitable and not have it forced on us by our government. We demand that our borders be secured, and a wink-and-nod to the invading migrants is not going to be tolerated.  The Republicans are heading for a train-wreck, and they remain blissfully unawares. 

I fear we may be in for a bloodbath in November; the Republicans willfull insistence on defying the voting public will be their undoing.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:16 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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This from the non-politician Jack Kemp:

We have been treated to the spectacle of Hillary using the term "spadework," saying Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s contribution was secondary (as in back of the bus?) to Lyndon Johnson's accomplishments on civil rights legislation, to Bill Clinton falling asleep at the side of a Martin Luther King Day black speaker and his also calling Sen. Obama a "hit man." It is clear that the Clintons have decided to play a white race card, figuring that white Democrats will vote against Barak Obama in large majority of states where an actually have a secret ballot primary. The Clintons are clearly saying they will bet their run for the presidency on Democrats' white racism, that these voters will not care about Bill and Hillary's insulting and divisive tactics against a black candidate.
 
Back in the 2000 Florida presidential election recount period, when the Democrats were arguing in court that the infamous Palm Beach butterfly ballot was overcomplicated and thus a device to deprive blacks of their voting franchise, it became clear that this was also the Democratic Party arguing that they themselves were racist in local Palm Beach County elections. Before some of you get too hot under the collar, let me explain.
 
The election was decided by slightly over 500 votes, a difference that easily falls within the count of Palm Beach County, where the butterfly ballot was approved. Palm Beach is a county with many liberal ex-New Yorkers and has a past (1990s) record of electing Democrats by a large majority, often 2 to 1. Despite Al Gore's attempt to blame Gov. Bush, this butterfly ballot was designed by a Democrat (the majority on the county election board members are Democrats) and approved in 1992 - when there was a Democrat as Florida governor named Lawton Chiles. Gov. Chiles did not object to or use his office to remove this butterfly ballot up to the time of his death in 1998. A Republican, "Jeb" Bush, didn't again become a Florida governor until January 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_Florida#Governors_of_Florida
 
In the general election, since Democrats were so dominant in the county vote totals, and since blacks voted mostly for Democrats, any disenfranchisement was largely moot (until the extremely public and close Florida 2000 recount). But, if in fact, the butterfly ballot was discriminatory against poor blacks - as Al Gore's lawyers were claiming in court, then largely Democratic voting blacks were greatly disenfranchised more so in Democratic primary elections from at least 1992 to 2000. Currently, the Democratic Party, in 2008, has disenfranchised all Florida primary voters as punishment for the "sin" of having an early primary. And the butterfly ballot was also used in union elections during that time, so less educated union workers were also disenfranchised, if Gore's attorneys were correct. On top of that, the Democrat election official, a woman, who designed the ballot, lost her election board job after the year 2000 bitterness. So you could also make a case that this was sex discrimination because she was taking the blame for a ballot approved, used, and supervised by many higher-up male elected officials - mostly Democrats. She was made to not only hit up against the "glass ceiling" - but have the glass ceiling hit her back.
 
One could also make the argument, as I previously did at American Thinker, that the Clintons sending Elian Gonzales back to Cuba outraged many Cuban-Americans (this from a party that claims to be sensitive to the feelings of minorities), cost Al Gore 57,000 switched votes and thus the Presidency - and conveniently stopped Hillary Clinton from being excluded from the 2004 presidential race because there was no President Al Gore to own the overpowering allegiance of the Democratic primary voters and delegates.
 
Now Hillary wants to reinstate the 2008 primary delegates from Florida and Michigan http://www.tv7-4.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=89021 , conveniently after all candidates were not allowed to campaign in those states, and Hillary "won" the Michigan primary, a state with many black voters, as Florida is a state with many black and Hispanic voters. Barak Obama's campaign manager - not a Republican - has already stated that the Clintons "will do or say anything to win an election." In other words, he is all but accusing the Clintons of wanting to steal votes, a form of disenfranchisement.
 
We see that prominent white Democrat leaders, Bill and Hillary Clinton, have given much credence to the claim that their party is quite racist - and they are comfortable with using that for their own gains.
 
Jack Kemp

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Tim,>>

Looking at the Presidency as if it were building a bridge>>

The Dims would have you believe that the best ones to build the bridge is:>>

            The wife of an engineer>>

            An intern>>

            Or a Lawyer>>

> >God help us for the bridge they would build.>>

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This from the New York Post, courtesy of Jack Kemp:

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01242008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/battling_for_boys_321868.htm?page=0

BATTLING FOR BOYS
HOW SCHOOLS STIFLE OUR SONS
By MARTY NEMKO

January 24, 2008 -- IN the early 1980s, men and women earned an equal proportion of college degrees. Today, however, women attain 135 degrees for every 100 that men do, the National Center for Education Statistics recently reported. By 2016, it'll be 162 to 100.
Since good jobs increasingly require a degree, that disparity portends disaster for men. And a disaster for half our population is a disaster for everyone.

Why the lack of male college graduates? One main reason is that K-12 education has been made girl-friendly at the expense of boys:

*Competition, a prime motivator for boys, has largely been replaced by "cooperative learning."

*Readings about adventure and heroism are giving way to tales of relationships and heroines.

*Social studies now stress men's ill-doings and women's (and minorities') contributions.

*Today, 91 percent of elementary-school teachers are women, the highest level on record. The main male role model most boys see in school is the custodian.

So it shouldn't surprise us that a University of Michigan study found that the number of boys who say they don't like school rose 71 percent from 1980 to 2001.

When boys get home, the lack of positive male role models and the assault on their self-esteem continues: TV portrays most men as buffoons or sleaze bags shown up by wise, confident women.

So is it any surprise that boys, more active than girls from birth, misbehave more in class? In decades past, they were simply called "active" and allowed to work off energy as the blackboard monitor or sent on an errand. Today, they're more likely to be put on Ritalin. Over the last 20 years, the number of boys drugged with stimulants to control "hyperactivity" has risen 3,000 percent.

It hasn't done much good. Boys' reading achievement has fallen well behind girls'. Boys are 21/2 times as likely to drop out of high school, 51/2 times as likely to commit suicide and, as mentioned, far less likely to earn a college degree. In the '60s, when more men than women obtained degrees, massive efforts were undertaken to redress the imbalance. Yet now, when men suffer the deficit, little is being done.

What should be done?

The media now take inordinate care to ensure that women and minorities are not unfairly portrayed negatively. Equal care must now be devoted to boys and men.

Schools claim to celebrate diversity yet insist on providing one-size-fits-all, girl-centric education. Whether in co-ed or single-sex classes, boys need boy-friendly instruction: more non-feminized male teachers, more competition, praise for boldness, more active learning (for example, simulation and drama) and less seatwork, less relationship-centric fiction and more how-to books.

Importantly, teachers must accept that boys will, on average, wiggle more than girls - and that it doesn't require ongoing criticism - which, not surprisingly, leads to more oppositional behavior, to the school psychologist, to Ritalin or to special education.

Ironically, educated parents often do especially badly by boys. The college curriculum and the media consumed by the intelligentsia stress women's' accomplishments and men's evils. So these parents too often feel justified in squeezing the maleness out of boys.

Of course, I'm not advocating that parents or teachers allow junior to become a savage. But we must realize that aggressiveness, bravery and competitiveness, channeled wisely, can be the stuff of which greatness is made.

We can refine but rarely remold, so we must honor males' ways of being, just as we've been urged now for decades to honor females'. Apart from the effect on society, so many unnecessarily unhappy and underperforming children is, in itself, most sad. Over the past 20 years, I've noticed a dramatic shift in the boys I've counseled.

Twenty years ago, most were confident and ambitious. Now, disproportionately, they're despondent or angry. The girls, by contrast, more often feel the world is their oyster. And they're right - but it should be both genders' oyster.

Boys advocate Joe Manthey reminds us that "when girls were behind in math and science, we said there's something wrong with the schools. But now, when boys don't do well in school, we say there's something wrong with the boy."

Let's stop blaming the boy and start fixing our media, parenting and schools.

Marty Nemko, co-president of the National Organization for Men, is a career and college adviser.

mnemko@comcast.net

******************************end***********************

A note from Tim:

In the musical My Fair Lady the lead character Henry Higgins, exasperated by feminine attitudes of the women in his life, asks ``why can`t a woman be more like a man`` and cites a litany of ``flaws`` in women that he would change if he could. This illustrates an age-old battle of the sexes, one going back to the dawn of Man.

Consider this passage from the Book of Genesis:

``Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.`` [Genesis 3;16)

Now, a casual reading of this overlooks the point being made; the woman had already usurped the role of her husband, disobeying the rule set down and henpecking the hapless Adam into disobeying the rule, too.  The second part of the curse was not that Eve would physically desire her husband but that she would be jealous of her husband, but he would rule over her.  In other words, God was cursing Mankind with a battle of the sexes, an endless war of dominance that would usually (but not always) end with the physically stronger men on top.

Judeo-Christian traditions began a movement towards equality of the sexes, away from the domination/submission role so often seen in primitive societies, and seen today in traditional Islam.  This movement was greatly accelerated by the industrial revolution, which made grunt labor far less important, making it possible for women to work outside the home in a less limited fashion and requiring less in the way of do-it-yourself living (such as making your own clothes).  This was followed by the miraculous labor-saving devices such as washing machines, refrigerators, microwave ovens, etc. which greatly reduced the time required to do daily chores. Women began to demand the same opportunities as men.

But the battle of the sexes is an old one, and feminism quickly turned into man-hating and a desire to gain hegemony.  Law was employed to force ``equality`` which became a joke; equality turned quickly to favoritism and social engineering. Women began demanding ``why can`t a man be more like a woman`` and we were treated to the era of the ``sensitive man`` who blubbered like a baby, who worried about their feelings, who was supposed to be less aggressive, less competitive, more socially oriented. 

The schools became the front line in this attempt to re-engineer men.  The ``men are scum`` mantra pounded incessantly at little boys` ears, and everything was reoriented toward the success of girls. 

Is it any wonder that Western Civilization is fading away?  The girlie-men this experiment in Matriarchy produced are irresponsible, unwilling to fight, unwilling to defend our traditional culture and way of life.  Children require strength, and so these panty-waists, beaten down by feminist attacks their whole lives, simply avoid having any or abandon them.  It should come as no surprise that Western society has become so left-leaning in recent decades; the feminine view of community has been inculcated in the young skulls full of mush, and the feminization of our culture means a socialistic, weak, squishy, therapeutic Oprahization.  In short, there are few real men left.

Bear ye witness!  I am not advocating a hyper-masculinized society of Atillas or Ghenghis Khans.  Feminization is important, in that men tend toward ruthlessness and barbarism, and women provide the stabilizing influence on them.  Men are Ying, women Yang; we do not want to get too far out of balance on either.  The Islamic world is all Ying and is vicious and cunning and oppressive.  Here in the West we are becomming all Yang, with a bunch of limp-wristed sissies for men and a gaggle of of cackling hens trying to act macho for women. 

What is needed is a society where we recognize the values in the other, where women celebrate men`s virtues as men celebrate women`s.  We have to understand that we need each-other to temper our own shortcomings.  I will state quite plainly that the Oprah culture is as ugly and distorting as any Patriarchal oppression.  In fact, female domination is in many ways more vicious and cutthroat, just more dishonest in that the fighting fems will say nice, soothing words to each-other as they slice for the jugular. Rush Limbaugh was only half kidding when he proposes a PMS Amazon battalion for the military.

I`ve known many women who prefer the company of men, not out of a flirtatious nature but to avoid the constant fighting and backstabbing of women.  That is what the feminists are bringing society writ large; a world that is genteel on the surface but a smoldering cauldron of bile beneath. 

Men help to balance that; the differences between the sexes help to restrain the baser impulses of both.  Unfortunately we have tossed out the Ying in favor of the Yang. We have done that to placate jealous females, women who want to rule over men as Eve sought dominion over Adam.  The war has been waged ever since, and the angry gals are winning through trickery and cunning, using the Judeo-Christian tradition of equality as a bludgeon against their hated enemy.

Decent, strong men come from unruly boys.  Those men have to be built from a proper steering of the boys impulses.  Liberals have always believed that they can change human nature, that they can create a new humanity in the image that they want.  They are fools, and this little experiment has proven them such.  Try though they might, liberals can`t get boys to play with dollies and girls to play with guns; it`s been tried, and boys make guns of their fingers while girls make dolls out of pillows and the like.  We are what we are, whether by the design of God or nature (a bone for you atheists), and we have to work from that starting point.  It`s time to nurture boys for who and what they are, and stop the feminization of our schools and culture. We need to free the POW`s int he Battle of the Sexes.

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Recently Jack Kemp reported on the arsenal of weapons found in a Columbia University professor`s apartment.  He shares some new details:

Tim, there was some other article yesterday saying the guy with the homemade bombs was responsible for swastikas put on synagogues in the last 6 months in Brooklyn. He appears to be someone from Russia, but refugees from there are not just Jews, but part Jews or non-Jews who got out (I've met a sane non-Jew from Russia when I used to program computers). This is a really troubled person lost in America. And why would a former AIDS researcher, much older than him, live with such a person? Were they a gay couple? The press isn't saying yet. There is a lot missing from this story, probably for legal reasons. It may come out (no pun intended) in court.
 
I don't know if you ever saw the book, "The Pru Bache Murder." It is a true 1980s story about some Russian Jew in Minneapolis (whose father killed his mother back in Russia) and trusted a fellow Jew, a broker at Prudential Bache, with his money. After losing most of it, making sure the client could not send his son to a private school and become someone, he took the broker from his parking lot at gunpoint, drove around with him for a few hours, and killed him, cutting off the head and hands. The police were able to identify the body anyway (forgot how), found residual blood in the trunk of the murder's car trunk, and he got life in jail.
 
Jack

Here is my reply:

Thanks, Jack!

I saw that business about the Russian (although some are identifying him as Bulgarian) and his anti-semitic graffitti; I figured they were either a gay couple or something clandestine was going on-planning for a terrorist attack, or bioweapons espionage, or some such.  I doubt we`ll ever know the entire story. The Sun has a follow up in which Columbia denies a formal association with this guy. It`s clearly a lie, as their website clearly lists him as an associate professor.

I`ve never heard of the Pru Bache murders; I`ll have to look it up!

Thanks,

Tim

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More from Thomas Sowell, courtesy of Wil Wirtanen:

Dangerous Demagoguery: Part II
By Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Everybody expects politicians to lie, especially during an election year. You can bet the rent money on it.

Among the many lies we can expect to hear this election year, none will be bigger or more often repeated, in the media as well as by politicians, than the lie that there is a widening income gap between the rich and the poor.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson listens to questions on the economy at the White House in Washington January 18, 2008. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES)

Why is that a lie, when there are so many statistics that seem to substantiate it?

Let's start at square one and take it a step at a time.

First of all, there is a fundamental difference between statistical categories and flesh-and-blood human beings.

When there is a growing disparity between one statistical category and another statistical category over time, that does not mean that there is a corresponding growing disparity between flesh-and-blood human beings over time, since human beings move from one statistical category to another.

The statistical categories in this case are income brackets. There is no question that incomes in the top income brackets have risen both absolutely and relative to the bottom income brackets.

The joker is that millions of people move from one income bracket to another.

The even bigger joker is that taxpayers whose incomes were in the bottom 20 percent in 1996 had a 91 percent increase in incomes by 2005.

Meanwhile, taxpayers in the top one-hundredth of one percent -- "the rich" or "superrich" if you believe politicians and the media -- had their incomes drop by 26 percent over those very same years.

Obviously, when millions of people's incomes nearly double in a decade, many of them move up out of the bottom income bracket. Similarly, when other people who were at the top see their income drop by about one-fourth, many of them drop out of that bracket.

When we talk about "the rich" and "the poor" we mean rich and poor human beings, not rich and poor statistical brackets. Yet politicians and the media treat people and statistical categories as if they were the same thing.

Part of the reason is that data on statistical brackets are more numerous and easier to find, whether from Census Bureau statistics or from a variety of other sources.

Data based on following actual flesh-and-blood individuals over time are, however, also available. The statistics quoted above are from the Treasury Department, which has people's income tax returns, so it is no problem for them to follow the same people over the years.

You can check out the numbers for yourself in a November 13, 2007 report from the Treasury Department titled "Income Mobility in the United States from 1996 to 2005." You can find a summary of the same data in a Wall Street Journal editorial that same day.

These are not the only data that tell a diametrically opposite story from the usual political and media story that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

A previous Treasury Department study showed similar patterns in individual income changes between 1979 and 1988.

Moreover, a study conducted at the University of Michigan, following the same individuals over an even longer span of time, likewise found most people moving from income bracket to income bracket over time -- especially among those who began in the bottom 20 percent.

The University of Michigan Panel Survey on Income Dynamics showed that, among people who were in the bottom 20 percent income bracket in 1975, only 5 percent were still in that category in 1991. Nearly six times as many of them were now in the top 20 percent in 1991.

There was a summary of the University of Michigan data in the 1995 annual report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which also issued an excerpt titled "By Our Own Bootstraps."

Among the intelligentsia, it is fashionable to sneer at income mobility as a "Horatio Alger myth" -- and, as someone once said, you cannot refute a sneer. But, among people who have not yet abandoned facts for rhetoric, it is worth stopping to consider whether they are being played for fools by politicians and much of the media.
 

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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