Who Needs Facts?

[philunderwood]

Facts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Facts

By Arnold Ahlert

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

Comedians Penn and Teller have a show call "Bulls**t!" which runs every so often on the Showtime cable network. The purpose of the show it to expose fraudulent ideas or thinking in an amusing way. The one I watched was about organic vegetables and whether or not they were any better than non-organic ones. The show, using both anecdotes and scientific evidence demonstrated pretty convincingly that they're not. But the anecdotes revealed something profound about the way people think -- or more accurately how some people allow feelings to completely over-ride reason.

First it should be noted that most organic food costs considerably more than non-organic food does. In the overwhelming majority of economic transactions, a higher price for something can be assumed to mean one of two things: a higher degree of scarcity, or a superior degree of quality. In terms of the former, the show blew a big hole in the cherished idea that "community" farms were the only ones producing organic vegetables. Turns out Big Agra knows a market when it sees one, and such "evil" corporations are more than willing to cash in. Also, 20 percent of organic food is grown in China, a country famous for their "quality" control.

In terms of the latter, an equally large hole was blown in the idea that organic foods were healthier, or that their methods of production were more "earth-friendly." Not only that, but it was revealed that if organic farming methods were adopted worldwide, two billion people would starve.

But all of the science paled in entertainment value to the taste test segments of the show. That's the part where the dedicated "save the earth" crowd was asked to choose between two plates of vegetables or fruit and tell the presenter which one was organic. Time after time, people convinced organic foods were better, chose non-organic foods as their preferred choice in terms of looks and more importantly taste, by an 80-90 percent margin. Yet when asked by the presenter if this new information would cause them to re-consider their buying habits, virtually every one them said they would continue to buy organic products.

But it gets even better. In one hilarious segment, the presenter cut a banana in half, told people one half was organic and asked people which half tasted better.

One woman who claimed her entire diet consisted of raw fruit and vegetables, was especially effusive regarding how much better the organic half of the banana tasted. When the truth was revealed, the tester asked the woman if she still thought organic food was superior. She answered yes -- and somewhat belatedly admitted such feelings might "psychological." In other words, facts be damned, I just like feeling good about what I believe in.

You wanna know why I'm a conservative? Because the above anecdotes represent the essence of progressive thinking.

For progressives, it doesn't matter that the country's economy is going to hell in a handbasket, that we're borrowing forty cents of every dollar we spend, that we've just upped the ante on the national debt from $14 trillion-plus to $16 trillion-plus, or that we're headed for national bankruptcy.

It doesn't matter that our soldiers are fighting wars with one hand tied behind their backs in order to "win the hearts and minds" of people who despise us, or that we're sitting on top of more energy than any other country on the planet, even as we send billions of dollars to the very same people who despise us. It doesn't matter that we're well on our way to making the nuclear family extinct, or that we're allowing millions of people who snuck into the country to live among us like they're entitled, or that the housing market was destroyed when government forced banks to lend money to people who would never pay it back.

Those are the facts, and facts be damned. Progressives just like feeling good about what they believe in.

Thus, it completely eludes progressives why companies refuse to hire, or ship jobs overseas at every opportunity. In prog-world, companies exist primarily to re-distribute wealth, not make a profit or turn out a product. In prog-world, every business owner is suspect until proven otherwise, even as thousands of rules and regulations must be substituted for common sense and common decency.

In prog-world, those with a "superior" sense of insight, aka government bureaucrats, academic "intellectuals," and self-aggrandizing media hacks must over-ride the sensibilities of millions of Americans acting in their own self-interest. Self-interest which is characterized as mean-spirited, thoughtless, cruel or religiously "fanatic."

Anyone who challenges such wisdom? The prog word du jour is "terrorist." But not used to describe actual baby-killing, strap-on-the-dynamite suit, all-Jews-are-ape-and-pigs kind of person. He's an "insurgent." A terrorist is a person who thinks spending forty percent more than the government takes in is insane. A terrorist is a person who thinks people who swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution ought to adhere to what that document specifically says about what government should or shouldn't do. A terrorist is a person who looks at the carnage wrought by the socialist/marxist societies throughout the course of history and doesn't understand that only reason such carnage occurred was because the wrong people were in charge.

Who are the "right" people? The folks who fervently believe that one half of the same banana is better than the other one.

I've got a hot flash for the banana-heads: the "terrorists" have no interest in underwriting your socialist utopia. They have no interest in substituting good feelings for hard truths. And while there may be many things you can force someone to do, one of them isn't starting a business, or expanding one already in existence. Not that is hasn't been tried. Every totalitarian society that ever existed yoked men to labor. And every one of them discovered coerced labor produces dismal results.

America's wealth-producing class is essentially on strike. And they're more than likely to remain so as long as progressives continue to insist that the stoking of envy, class warfare and guilt is a viable substitute for providing people with incentive. It is not and it never will be. Those are the facts.

And all the self-righteous feelings in the world won't change them.

A final note: I wrote most of this before S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating. Note what happened almost immediately: S&P got hammered by the Obama administration for having the temerity to notice government spending is completely out of control. When "kill the messenger" is your best line of defense, you're out of ideas.

Here's two ideas, Mr. president: one, give up the ghost on your tedious and ultimately destructive allegiance to re-distributionist Marxism, masquerading itself as Keynesian stimulus. It hasn't "created or saved" anything other than government budgets and public sector unions. Those priorities demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that getting re-elected, rather than fixing the economy, is your first priority. Second, show Tim Geithner the door. His credibility, highlighted by his assurance in April that the U.S. would never get a ratings downgrade, is completely gone. He should be completely gone as well.

Perhaps he can get a job selling organic vegetables.

[twinder]

I've seen several of Penn & Teller's Bullshit shows. The problem is that if you don't get Showtime, you don't know about it.

[Ritty77]

I like Penn and Teller, but I don't get showtime.

Phil, the article you posted is excellent. Plain, demonstrable truth.

[philunderwood]

www.qando.net/?tag=joe-biden

Joe Biden: Scaring the little people in flyover land

Published October 20, 2011 | By Bruce McQuain

In another version of the “pushing granny over the cliff” scare which typified the resistance mounted by Democrats to Social Security reform, VP Joe Biden is out there trying to scare the people about crime in order to spend more on shoring up the Democratic base (more political cronyism) to be found in teacher’s and public servant’s unions:


“Murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crimes will continue to rise,” if the Democrats agenda isn’t passed, he added.

Because, you know, there’s a direct correlation between murder, rape and the number of cops on the beat.

Except both murder and rape stats have been in a downward trend since 2006. In 2006 the murder rate per 100,000 was 5.7, rape 30.9.

In 2010 the rate for murder was 4.8 and rape 27.5. In the two intervening years, those numbers continued to fall. And we all know we’ve been in the recession for at least 3 years and there have been cutbacks in police during that time.

So, unsurprisingly Biden is wrong and is pushing a myth (they’ll “continue rising”) when in fact, the stats show a steady drop for the past 4 years.

But he’s shameless in his fact free attack:


Then in the same speech he wished Republicans were themselves rape victims. “I wish they had some notion of what it was like to be on the other side of a gun, or [to have] a 200-pound man standing over you, telling you to submit.”

Amazing. Vice President of the US and trying to pull this political hackery complete with the usual scare tactics off. Of course, look at his boss.

~McQ

[philunderwood]

drsanity.blogspot.com/

Dr. Sanity
Shining a psychological spotlight on a few of the insanities of life


Monday, March 26, 2012

ANYTHING BUT 'POST-RACIAL'

It looks like President Obama's investment in racial divisiveness is going the way of his Solyndra investment:
With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk several times, leaving him bloody and battered, authorities have revealed to the Orlando Sentinel.

That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say…

Zimmerman told them he lost sight of Trayvon and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from the left rear, and they exchanged words.

Trayvon asked Zimmerman if he had a problem. Zimmerman said no and reached for his cell phone, he told police.

Trayvon then said, “Well, you do now” or something similar and punched Zimmerman in the nose.

Zimmerman fell to the ground and Trayvon got on top of him and began slamming his head into the sidewalk, he told police.

Zimmerman began yelling for help.

Several witnesses heard those cries, and there’s been a dispute about from whom they came: Zimmerman or Trayvon.

Lawyers for Trayvon’s family say it was Trayvon, but police say their evidence indicates it was Zimmerman.

One witnesses, who has since talked to local television news reporters, told police he saw Zimmerman on the ground with Trayvon on top, pounding him and was unequivocal that it was Zimmerman who was crying for help.

Zimmerman then shot Trayvon once in the chest from very close range, according to authorities.

When police arrived less than two minutes later, Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose, had a swollen lip and had bloody lacerations to the back of his head.

I will be interested to see if drugs are found in either Martin's or Zimmerman's system. Again, this is a case where the rush to judgment is a great disservice to both the families and the two men involved; as well as to the entire country.

We expect race-baiting from Al Sharpton; that's his gig. But the the "first post-racial" President has been anything but "post-racial".

If you put aside this case and let justice take it's course, you can begin to see how desperate the White House has become to deflect attention away from its policies which are bringing America to the brink of an economic cliff.

First there was the comedic case of Fluke; now the tragedy of Martin. Both have been manipulated by a President and a media who would prefer to frame the discussion as either (or both) a "war on women" or a "war on blacks".

Meanwhile, civil discussion reaches an all time low --what will poor Eric Holder do now???

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity

[twinder]

I was watching the press conference by the Trayvon parents. As soon as I saw Rev. Sharpton standing in the camera frame, I stopped listening.
I was very interested in listening to one of the eyewitnesses, who is a black man, corroborating Zimmerman's account of the confrontation. Immediately, the media started to treat him like Herman Cain.
It's such a shame.

[Ritty77]

Here's NRO's Victor Davis Hanson on the Trayvon matter. It's the beginning of a larger article detailing Obama's rush to interject himself into these things in order to promote division.

www.nationalreview.com/articles/294481/obama-s-demagoguery-victor-davis-hanson


The atrocity at first seemed undeniable: A white vigilante, with a Germanic name no less, hunted down and then executed a tiny black youth — who, from his published grammar-school photos, seemed about twelve — while he was walking innocently and eating candy in an exclusive gated community in northern Florida. The gunman had used a racial slur, as supposedly heard on a 911 tape, and ignored the dispatcher’s urging him to back off.

The apparently racist, or at least insensitive, white police chief and district attorney then covered up the murder. Understandable outrage followed in the black community, but the killing also brought out the usual demagogues. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and the New Black Panther Party all alleged that the shooting death of Trayvon Martin was an indictment of a systematically racist white society. They demanded justice, and the Black Panthers announced a $10,000 bounty on the supposed killer. Even Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter got into the act, dubbing the shooting an “assassination.”

The dispute went national and was soon further sensationalized along racial lines. Others, mostly non–African Americans, countered that the facts were still in dispute and information was incomplete, while noting that just a few days earlier in Chicago ten youths were murdered and at least 40 others shot. Most of those victims and shooters were African Americans, but the carnage did not earn commensurate national attention from black leaders. President Obama himself, who had been silent about the slaughter in his adopted hometown, weighed in on the Martin case and, unfortunately, highlighted the racial undertones — lamenting that the murdered Martin looked just the way his own boy might, had he a son. The latter statement was true but also, of course, true of some of those murdered in Chicago. And given that the black minority currently commits violent crimes against the white majority more frequently than do the nation’s 70 percent whites against its 12 percent blacks, the president’s evocation of race in the Martin case seemed inappropriate to many.

But no crime proves quite as simple as initially reported in our sensationalized 24/7 media. Amid the blaring reports of a racially inspired murder, it turned out that the shooter, George Zimmerman, was actually part Hispanic, with a Latino mother (he was dubbed “white Hispanic” by the media, whereas Barack Obama is not referred to as a “white African-American”), and that he was perhaps not the quick-on-the-draw nut he was caricatured in the press as being. The 911 tape was scratchy, and it was unclear on another recording who said what, or who later was screaming for assistance.

The deceased, Trayvon Martin, was not a pre-teen, but 17 and 6′2″, and the gated community was ethnically mixed and may not have a white majority. True, the supposed vigilante had shot Martin, but he was also a neighborhood-watch designee, assigned to look for supposedly suspicious individuals. And the shooting occurred during some sort of fistfight in which Zimmerman may have been losing. The police, whom most thought should have at least filed manslaughter charges, seemed dumbfounded by a Florida law called “Stand Your Ground,” which could be stretched to mean that almost anyone could use deadly force if he believed that his life was endangered. In sum, what had seemed from media accounts to be a racist first-degree murder, horrifically covered up, on closer examination might have been either second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, some sort of criminal negligence, or even simple self-defense — the point being that we will not know the degree of Zimmerman’s guilt, if any, until all the evidence in the case is released to the public. Daily, new information has emerged, and, daily, the previous day’s narrative has changed.

In other words, the president waded into an ongoing investigation, in which the facts of the case remain murky and in dispute. And instead of playing down the racial component of the tragedy in polarized times, he seemed instead deliberately to have emphasized it.

[philunderwood]

Dr. Sanity
Shining a psychological spotlight on a few of the insanities of life


Sunday, April 01, 2012

DESPERATELY SEEKING SUPERIORITY

I don't know about you, but I for one and really sick and tired of all those pseudoscientific articles and gleeful books proclaiming the superiority of the leftist brain.

To all the Chris Mooney's of the political left who are desperately attempting to "prove" that their leftist brains are superior to the clearly intellectually defective brains of conservatives, I have this to say:

A skeptical mind is a mind that is, at least, thinking. A mind that automatically believe anything asserted by authority--even supposedly "scientific" authority--abandoned rational thought long ago.

The left's attempts to "scientifically prove" conservatives are stupid can be thought of as the latest volley in their ad hominem attack campaign ( ad hominem is only one of many logical fallacies championed by the superior intellects of the left) because they are intellectually unable to address the arguments conservatives make in the political arena.

I've know brilliant people of both conservative and leftist persuasions; and I've also known complete morons from both sides of the political aisle. It is one thing to be a moron; but quite another to be a truly despicable moron, i.e. someone who is desperately seeks superiority by hiding behind the authority of science.

As for me, I will think for myself.

P.S. The only "low brain power" evidenced in this study is its obvious ideological interpretation by the so-called scientists who are responsible for it. Taking their data at face value, I can come up with multiple interpretations that have nothing to do with politics. But I guess when you are a liberal hammer, everything looks like a conservative nail.

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity

[philunderwood]

www.qando.net/?cat=50

Why it’s pointless to argue with the left, summarized in 33 seconds

Published April 25, 2012 | By Billy Hollis

As the blue social model collapses, it’s most vocal defenders continue their retreat into delusion. This 33 second segment of a video from Reason TV is one of the more jaw-dropping examples.



Communism caused 3/4 of a century of deprivation, misery, and quasi-slavery, and killed 100,000,000 in the bargain. The left still hasn’t come to terms with that. I’m pretty sure they never will.

You could sit the woman in the video down and present her with a mountain of evidence that Cuba is a sick society, a poor society, a repressive society in which citizens who oppose the Cuban government the way she opposes the US government are locked up for most or all their life. It wouldn’t matter. She has constructed an elaborate fantasy in her head.

After all she’s "seen Cuba" and it sounds like she really loved the role of the useful idiot being shown the potemkin society the Cuban appartchiks allowed her to see. She thereby proves to herself how moral she is, and how much better and smarter she is than we skeptics who have seen the pictures of real Cuban healthcare, cockroaches and all, smuggled out by people who would have been shot or imprisoned if they had been caught with those pictures.

You can see it in her face, and hear it in her voice – that condescension that reveals her inner conviction that she’s smart and moral, and other people ought to think exactly the way she thinks, even though to anyone connected to reality, she’s clearly delusional.

Deep down in her own mind, where she never dares go, some part of her knows that it’s a delusion and a fantasy. Because otherwise, she would want to live in this paradise she describes. She and thousands would be taking whatever measures they could come up with to go and live there, instead of it being the exact opposite, with thousands upon thousands risking their lives on makeshift boats to get out. Consciously, she spins her fantasy about how wonderful Cuba is, but subconsciously, she never dares think about actually living there.

One of the main reasons leftists talk this way is partially to convince themselves. Reality intrudes more every day as the blue social model breaks down. But facing that failure means admitting a lifetime of being a gullible fool. Most of them don’t have the psychic strength for that. They can’t admit that there’s a single thing wrong with the leftist worldview.

For example, they’ve also never come to terms with the housing bubble and the government’s role in it. They prefer to believe that a financial industry that had intelligently managed home mortgages for decades just collectively lost its mind and started writing bad loans, and the government actions that took place in the same period are complete coincidences. The pressure towards "affordable housing", the implicit and explicit threats by government to those who didn’t loan to minorities, the pipeline to offload the risk to quasi-government agencies – they look directly at those things, and apparently suffer inattentional blindness because they just can’t see them.

They’ve never come to terms with the fact that the worst areas of the country are those that have been governed by liberal and leftist Democrats for decades – including a crumbling city that was once one of America’s shining success stories, now undone by unions, liberalism, bureaucrats, and corruption.

They look at exponential curves that foretell the collapse of Social Security and Medicare, and bleat about how we just have to make the rich pay their "fair share", blind to the fact that the top ten percent already pay 70% of income taxes.

You can’t even tell them that Bush didn’t really hold a plastic turkey. They formulate their narratives and talking points, and that’s the end of their cognitive effort. They have thereby constructed a fantasy world they prefer to live in.

In that world, Cuba really does have superior healthcare and free elections.

Europe is advanced and stable, a beacon for the rest of the world, not an aging society that is broke, with an unsustainable welfare state and a birth rate that spells disaster in a generation.

China is a sterling example of how wonderful things can be when people like them run things, not a repressive society that hides its pollution and filth, keeps a bubble going by building ghost cities, and is facing demographic problems never seen in history on such a scale.

Israel is a nation of violent butchers, who just happen to save the sick babies of their enemies as a hobby.

And the US is a racist society, holding down minorities with trigger-happy vigilantes, instead of a country that elected a black president and has been the destination for every race and creed on the globe.

OK, let them live in their fantasy world. In the end, reality always wins. And it’s pretty clear that even the reality of a total meltdown of the blue social model isn’t going to make them re-examine their fantasies, any more than the meltdown of the Soviet Union did. As I said, they don’t have the psychic strength to face it.

They prefer groupthink to reality, because confronting reality means confronting their worst fear: that they might be wrong, that they might not be smarter than the rest of us. That they might be frauds who can talk or write, but who can’t think.

So let them be. Laugh at them if you like; there’s plenty of humor to be found in their floundering, and goodness knows we need humor to get through the mess they’ve put us in. But don’t let them induce you to waste your time by trying to disprove their fantasies. That’s a lost cause.

[leisuresuitlarry]

Bingo.

[philunderwood]

Figures don't lie: Dems do

By Ann Coulter

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

It's been breaking news all over MSNBC, liberal blogs, newspapers and even The Wall Street Journal: "Federal spending under Obama at historic lows ... It's clear that Obama has been the most fiscally moderate president we've had in 60 years." There's even a chart!

I'll pause here to give you a moment to mop up the coffee on your keyboard. Good? OK, moving on ...

This shocker led to around-the-clock smirk fests on MSNBC. As with all bogus social science from the left, liberals hide the numbers and proclaim: It's "science"! This is black and white, inarguable, and why do Republicans refuse to believe facts?

Ed Schultz claimed the chart exposed "the big myth" about Obama's spending: "This chart -- the truth -- very clearly shows the truth undoubtedly." And the truth was, the "growth in spending under President Obama is the slowest out of the last five presidents."

Note that Schultz also said that the "part of the chart representing President Obama's term includes a stimulus package, too." As we shall see, that is a big, fat lie.

Schultz's guest, Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston confirmed: "And clearly, Obama has been incredibly tight-fisted as a president."

Everybody's keyboard OK?

On her show, Rachel Maddow proclaimed: "Factually speaking, spending has leveled off under President Obama. Spending is not skyrocketing under President Obama. Spending is flattening out under President Obama."

In response, three writers from "The Daily Show" said, "We'll never top that line," and quit.

Inasmuch as this is obviously preposterous, I checked with John Lott, one of the nation's premier economists and author of the magnificent new book with Grover Norquist: Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future (I'm reviewing it soon, but you should start without me.)

It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama's entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.

That's not a joke.

That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in ... Bush's column. (And if we attribute all of Bush's spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and No Child Left Behind to William Howard Taft, Bush didn't spend much either.)

Nutting's "analysis" is so dishonest, even The New York Times has ignored it. He includes only the $140 billion of stimulus money spent after Oct. 1, 2009, as Obama's spending. And he's testy about that, grudgingly admitting that Obama "is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill."

Nutting acts as if it's the height of magnanimity to "attribute that $140 billion in stimulus to Obama and not to Bush ..."

On what possible theory would that be Bush's spending? Hey -- we just found out that Obamacare's going to cost triple the estimate. Let's blame it on Calvin Coolidge!

Nutting's "and not to Bush" line is just a sleight of hand. He's hoping you won't notice that he said "$140 billion" and not "$825 billion," and will be fooled into thinking that he's counting the entire stimulus bill as Obama's spending. (He fooled Ed Schultz!)

The theory is that a new president is stuck with the budget of his predecessor, so the entire 2009 fiscal year should be attributed to Bush.

But Obama didn't come in and live with the budget Bush had approved. He immediately signed off on enormous spending programs that had been specifically rejected by Bush. This included a $410 billion spending bill that Bush had refused to sign before he left office. Obama signed it on March 10, 2009. Bush had been chopping brush in Texas for two months at that point. Marketwatch's Nutting says that's Bush's spending.

Obama also spent the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP). These were discretionary funds meant to prevent a market meltdown after Lehman Brothers collapsed. By the end of 2008, it was clear the panic had passed, and Bush announced that he wouldn't need to spend the second half of the TARP money.

But on Jan. 12, 2009, Obama asked Bush to release the remaining TARP funds for Obama to spend as soon as he took office. By Oct. 1, Obama had spent another $200 billion in TARP money. That, too, gets credited to Bush, according to the creative accounting of Rex Nutting.

There are other spending bills that Obama signed in the first quarter of his presidency, bills that would be considered massive under any other president -- such as the $40 billion child health care bill, which extended coverage to immigrants as well as millions of additional Americans. These, too, are called Bush's spending

Frustrated that he can't shift all of Obama's spending to Bush, Nutting also lowballs the spending estimates during the later Obama years. For example, although he claims to be using the White House's numbers, the White House's estimate for 2012 spending is $3.795 trillion. Nutting helpfully knocks that down to $3.63 trillion.

But all those errors pale in comparison to Nutting's counting Obama's nine-month spending binge as Bush's spending.

If liberals will attribute Obama's trillion-dollar stimulus bill to Bush, what won't they do?

[philunderwood]

The Real 'War on Women'

By Thomas Sowell

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

Among the people who are disappointed with President Obama, none has more reason to be disappointed than those who thought he was going to be "a uniter, rather than a divider" and that he would "bring us all together."

It was a noble hope, but one with no factual foundation. Barack Obama had been a divider all his adult life, especially as a community organizer, and he had repeatedly sought out and allied himself with other dividers, the most blatant of whom was the man whose church he attend for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.

Now, with his presidency on the line and the polls looking dicey, President Obama's re-election campaign has become more openly divisive than ever.

He has embraced the strident "Occupy Wall Street" movement, with its ridiculous claim of representing the 99 percent against the 1 percent. Obama's Department of Justice has been spreading the hysteria that states requiring photo identification for voting are trying to keep minorities from voting, and using the prevention of voter fraud as a pretext.

But anyone who doubts the existence of voter fraud should read John Fund's book "Stealing Elections" or J. Christian Adams's book, "Injustice," which deals specifically with the Obama Justice Department's overlooking voter fraud when those involved are black Democrats.

Not content with dividing classes and races, the Obama campaign is now seeking to divide the sexes by declaring that women are being paid less than men, as part of a "war on women" conducted by villains, from whom Obama and company will protect the women — and, not incidentally, expect to receive their votes this November.

The old — and repeatedly discredited — game of citing women's incomes as some percentage of men's incomes is being played once again, as part of the "war on women" theme.

Since women average fewer hours of work per year, and fewer years of consecutive full-time employment than men, among other differences, comparisons of male and female annual earnings are comparisons of apples and oranges, as various female economists have pointed out. Read Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute or Professor Claudia Goldin of Harvard, for example.

When you compare women and men in the same occupations with the same skills, education, hours of work, and many other factors that go into determining pay, the differences in incomes shrink to the vanishing point — and, in some cases, the women earn more than comparable men.

But why let mere facts spoil the emotional rhetoric or the political ploys to drum up hysteria and collect votes?

The farcical nature of these ploys came out after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi declared that Congress needed to pass the Fair Pay Act, because women average 23 percent lower incomes than men.

A reporter from The Daily Caller then pointed out that the women on Nancy Pelosi's own staff average 27 percent lower incomes than the men on her staff. Does that show that Pelosi herself is guilty of discrimination against women? Or does it show that such simple-minded statistics are grossly misleading?

The so-called Fair Pay Act has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with election-year politics. No one in his right mind expects that bill to become law. It will be lucky to pass the Senate, and has no chance whatever of getting passed in the House of Representatives.

The whole point of this political exercise is to get Republicans on record voting against "fairness" for women, as part of the Democrats' campaign strategy to claim that there is a "war on women."

If you are looking for a real war on women, you might look at the practice of aborting girl babies after an ultrasound picture shows that they are girls. These abortions are the most basic kind of discrimination, and their consequences have already been demonstrated in countries like China and India, where sexually discriminatory abortions and female infanticide have produced an imbalance in the number of adult males and females.

A bill to outlaw sexually and racially discriminatory abortions has been opposed and defeated by House Democrats.

[philunderwood]

The Invincible Lie

By Thomas Sowell

www.JewishWorldReview.com |

Anyone who wants to study the tricks of propaganda rhetoric has a rich source of examples in the statements of President Barack Obama. On Monday, July 9th, for example, he said that Republicans "believe that prosperity comes from the top down, so that if we spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, that that will somehow unleash jobs and economic growth."

Let us begin with the word "spend." Is the government "spending" money on people whenever it does not tax them as much as it can? Such convoluted reasoning would never pass muster if the mainstream media were not so determined to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil when it comes to Barack Obama.

Ironically, actual spending by the Obama administration for the benefit of its political allies, such as the teachers' unions, is not called spending but "investment." You can say anything if you have your own private language.

But let's go back to the notion of "spending" money on "the wealthiest Americans." The people he is talking about are not the wealthiest Americans. Income is not wealth — and the whole tax controversy is about income taxes. Wealth is what you have accumulated, and wealth is not taxed, except when you die and the government collects an inheritance tax from your heirs.

People over 65 years of age have far more wealth than people in their thirties and forties — but lower incomes. If Obama wants to talk about raising income taxes, let him talk about it, but claiming that he wants to tax "the wealthiest Americans" is a lie and an emotional distraction for propaganda purposes.

The really big lie — and one that no amount of hard evidence or logic seems to make a dent in — is that those who oppose raising taxes on higher incomes simply want people with higher incomes to have more money, in hopes that some of their prosperity will "trickle down" to the rest of the people.

Some years ago, a challenge was issued in this column to name any economist, outside of an insane asylum, who had ever said any such thing. Not one example has yet been received, whether among economists or anyone else. Someone is always claiming that somebody else said it, but no one has ever been able to name and quote that somebody else.

Once we have put aside the lies and the convoluted use of words, what are we left with? Not much.

Obama is claiming that the government can get more tax revenue by raising the tax rate on people with higher incomes. It sounds plausible, and that may be enough for some people, but the hard facts make it a very iffy proposition.

This issue has been fought out in the United States in several administrations — both Democratic and Republican. It has also been fought out in other countries.

What is the real argument of those who want to prevent taxes from rising above a certain percentage, even for people with high incomes? It has nothing to do with making them more prosperous so that their prosperity will "trickle down."

A Democratic president — John F. Kennedy — stated the issue plainly. Under the existing tax rates, he explained, investors' "efforts to avoid tax liabilities" made them put their money in tax shelters, because existing tax laws made "certain types of less productive activity more profitable than other more valuable undertakings" for the country.

Ironically, the Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney for putting his money in the Cayman Islands substantiate the point that President Kennedy and others have made, that higher tax rates can drive money into tax shelters, whether tax-exempt municipal bonds or investments in other countries.

In other words, raising tax rates does not automatically raise tax revenues for the government. Higher tax rates have often led to lower tax revenues for states, the federal government and other countries. Conversely, lower tax rates have often led to higher tax revenues. It all depends on the circumstances.

But none of this matters to Barack Obama. If class warfare rhetoric about taxes leads to more votes for him, that is his bottom line, whether the government gets a dime more revenue or not. So long as his lies go unchallenged, a second term will be the end result for him and a lasting calamity for the country.

[philunderwood]

Making Ben Carson cry 'Uncle' . . . Tom

By Star Parker

JewishWorldReview.com |

Dr. Ben Carson stepped into the national spotlight in February, when, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast to an audience that included President Barack Obama, he openly criticized the president's approach to health care and his overall management of the nation's economy.

Carson, who is director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is a hero to many. His rise from a Detroit ghetto to a life of accomplishment and distinction is a story of American ideals on steroids.

Those ideals say that America is about merit, not circumstance. Your life, your achievements are the result of what you do and how you live, not where you came from.

The hard history of blacks in America has always made it a challenge for them to accept this credo. Many still carry a sense that those ideals may be true for whites, but they never were true, and still aren't true, for blacks.

So in this context, Carson's story is particularly important. It's making liberals nervous, and the attacks on him are starting.

He's now pulled out, under pressure, from giving the commencement address at Johns Hopkins University because some are unhappy with how, in an interview on Fox, he expressed his views regarding the importance of maintaining the integrity of traditional marriage.

Blacks have known about Carson for years. I gave his book, "Gifted Hands," to my daughters to read when they were little girls. A highly acclaimed made-for-TV movie about his life aired in 2009, with Carson played by Oscar-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr.

But this story of personal responsibility, hard work and traditional values is becoming a political story. It is becoming political because Ben Carson's American dream story, according to the liberal script, is not supposed to work for blacks.

Carson is the biggest threat to liberals since Bill Cosby got out of line at an NAACP banquet in 2004 in Washington, D.C.

Cosby had the temerity to deliver tough, critical talk about what too many blacks are doing with the freedom that civil rights activists of the 1960's fought to achieve.

He contrasted the Sixties generation with the new generation of black youths sitting in jail: "These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake."

Cosby attributed the chaos to a breakdown in values, family and personal responsibility. It's the last thing the NAACP crowd wanted to hear that night and Cosby paid a price. He was vilified and marginalized until he backed off.

Liberals never take on what black conservatives actually say because they can't. So the attacks become personal.

Trillions of tax dollars have been poured into black communities over the last half-century, producing virtually no change in the incidence of black poverty.

Yet, Carson, through diligence and traditional values, achieved on his own what those trillions of dollars of government programs were supposed to deliver.

Liberal black writer Ta-Nehisi Coates put the cards on the table in an article about Cosby that appeared in The Atlantic magazine in 2008. The typical black conservative votes for Democrats, he notes, "not out of love for abortion rights ... but because he feels.... that the modern-day GOP draws on support of people who hate him."

Stoking paranoia about racism has always been the strategy of liberals to fend off the political threat of conservative values that so many church-going blacks embrace.

Predictably, Coates has produced a New York Times column on Carson, reducing this great man to the usual caricature of a black empty suit manipulated by white conservatives.

Ben Carson is an accomplished and wealthy man. Americans, certainly black Americans, need him in public life more than he needs to be in public life. Let's hope the left wing and the haters of traditional morality don't succeed in making him conclude it's not worth it.