Single moms want their babies and confidently expect Big Brother to provide for them

The attack on the institution of marriage is not only the biggest cultural but also the biggest fiscal issue of our times

writes Phyllis Schlafly,

and political and judicial attacks by gays are only part of the problem. Marriage is being assaulted by unilateral divorce, feminist hostility toward marriage, the bias of family courts against fathers, and the taxpayer-paid financial incentives that subsidize illegitimate births.

…out-of-wedlock births in the United States have grown to 72.3 percent for blacks, 52.5 percent for Hispanics, and 28.6 percent for whites (non-Hispanic). For the population as a whole, out-of-wedlock births have risen from 6 percent in the 1960s to 40.6 percent today.

Sounding a Moynihan-style alarm today is Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. He has assembled figures from U.S. Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control data, and they are downright scary.

This is not, as Moynihan indicated, merely a black problem, and it's not just a cultural problem as the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only, the fiscal conservatives who disdain social issues) like to portray it. It's a very big money problem because the government is transferring nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer-funded handouts to the 40 percent of Americans who rely on government for all or part of their living expenses.

The crux of this problem and its costs is that a lack of marriage causes poverty. The poverty rate for single parents with children is 36.5 percent, while it is only 6.4 percent for married couples with children.

We just suffered the largest increase in government-designated poverty: 3.7 million more Americans moved into the "poor" column in 2009. The number of Americans receiving food stamps just rose to a record 41.8 million.

Obama's solution for the poverty problem is more redistribution of money from taxpayers to the poor. But there's no evidence that more money is the remedy because we've been increasing handouts every year and the problem keeps getting worse.

Contrary to a lot of chatter, this isn't a teenage problem (only 7.7 percent of new single moms are minors), and it isn't a failure of birth control, and it isn't the accidents of unplanned pregnancies. These single moms want their babies and confidently expect Big Brother to provide for them.

Rector's solution to the poverty problem is marriage. He urges government policies to promote and strengthen the institution of marriage instead of providing incentives to discourage it.

…Ronald Reagan's advice is still pertinent. If we subsidize something, we'll get more of it; if we tax it, we'll get less of it.

Why not ask for a lawyer while you're at it?!?!

— Huh?!… You want a cup of coffee?! Why not a lawyer while you're at it?!!

Plantu: Europe criticizes France's police custody (garde à vue) regimen

Apocalypse arriveth

Democtatorship: "As Expected From France's Newspaper of Reference, a Damning Article on the Tea Party Replete With Pejoratives and Caricatures"

A hand-wringing full-page article in Le Monde speaks with ill of Hungary because following the latest elections, a Hungarian rightist party has won commanding control over the nation. Asks Marion Van Renterghem:

Should we be afraid of Viktor Orban? … Triumphantly elected in April, the conservative prime minister and nationalist, 47, is no longer the man who led the country from 1998 to 2002. For the first time ever, he has full power in his hands. His party, Fidesz, has an overwhelming majority and municipal elections on October 3 confirmed its grip. … The writer [György Konrad] has his definition of the new regime: a "democtatorship" — something between democracy and dictatorship.

Le Monde regrets that

the Prime Minister [commands] a two-thirds majority in Parliament and total control of the legislative and executive branches. Facing him ... no powerful opposition force.

So far, so good.

The problem is that in another full-page article in Le Monde, on America's Tea Parties, Denis Lacorne multiplies caricatures of Republicans, ridicule of conservatives, and demonization of America's democracy ("une émeute", "rappel farfelu", "ses incohérences", les "plus extrémistes", "un chacun pour soi généralisé", "sans la moindre considération", "la hantise", "des amateurs", "une néophyte de la politique", "la risée des médias", "de façon hystérique", "des opinions aussi délirantes", "parodie du mouvement des droits civiques", "un discours insipide", "travestir la pensée de Martin Luther King", "partisans de l'ultralibéralisme", "un discours répressif", "cette maladie infantile de l'ultraconservatisme")…

After reading about the "supporters of ultra-liberalism", and about the "delusional" opinions among those "hysterically" opposed to Washington (and to the ruling party), and about the danger of "a comprehensive legislative paralysis" — if by (the largest of) misfortune(s), the opposition were to win too many seats — one gets the distinct impression that nothing would please France's newspaper of reference and the French élite more than if the U.S. were to become a "democtatorship" (just like, indeed, few things would seem to please the American left more)…

Nothing would be more wonderful than if Barack Obama commanded "full powers." Nothing would be more wonderful than if "his party," the Democratic Party, "had an overwhelming majority." Nothing would be more wonderful than if the One commanded a "two-thirds majority in Parliament, along with total control of the legislative and executive branches." And nothing would be more wonderful than if "Facing him, [there was] no powerful opposition force."

Ultimately, nothing would be more wonderful than a "democtatorship" when this democtatorship is a leftist democtatorship, and in the hands of an Great Helmsman of the caliber of Barack Obama, a spiritual guide for the American nation (and for the whole planet).

Sarkozy Learns That Taking Candy From the French is a Bitch

A Parisian teen I know has been telling her friends:

La fac veut qu'on aille manifester, les absences ne seront pas comptés! Jusqu'a Jeudi! génial Grasse Mat'! :D

Or in other words:

Our university wants us to join the demonstration, absences won't be counted! Until Thursday! Awesome — we can sleep in late!

Sarkozy Learns That Taking Candy From the French is a Bitch, writes Greg Gutfield (merci à Valerie et à Benjamin).

…what is France today?

It’s bankrupt …

And…what’s driving this heroic protest? Oppression? Fascism? Threat of war?

No – vacations. Really.

You know how folks in France enjoy not working for really long periods of time? Well, it turns out that, after a while – when you don’t work, you can no longer pay for stuff – like the pensions that allow you to loaf around.

The protesters are trying to stop a bill that would raise retirement age from 60 to 62. Yeah – 62 – still pretty much the youngest retirement age anywhere. But workers feel it’ll ruin a good time- including the long playful summers, subsidized health care, free berets and mime welfare.

… This is what happens when you give something to someone, and then – in order to survive – try to take it away.

We were wrong: Taking candy from a baby is actually a bitch.

And only the truly ballsy can pull that off. Sarkozy – bless him – has more balls than a McDonald’s play pit.

One Component of French Authorities' "Repressive Hysteria" Towards Its Citizens (la patrie des droits de l'homme?!) Declared Incompatible with EU Law

Five days after France was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for the French police's heavy-handed approach towards its citizens (garde à vue), France's own supreme court (or the equivalent thereof) declared the garde à vue incompatible with European law, writes Le Monde.

La Cour de cassation a ouvert mardi 19 octobre une nouvelle brèche dans le régime de la garde à vue en France, procédure policière coercitive qui concerne chaque année plus de 900 000 personnes. … Plus de 790 000 mesures de garde à vue ont été décidées en 2009, dont plus de 170 000 pour les seuls délits routiers.

More than 170,000 people taken into police custody in 2009 for simple traffic violations?! (While the police stand by and refuse to intervene as (empty) schools are blocked by protestors and as school employees come under violent attack by masked thugs?!) No wonder that one reader opines:

790000 GàV pour un pays qui a un degré de délinquance normale par rapport à ses voisins c'est consternant et donne une idée de l'hystérie répressive de ce gvt et des orientations qu'il donne à la police. Tout ça pour faire oublier le reste, dont la politique sociale exclusivement en faveur des invités du Fouquet's à la sauterie d'après élection. Et en plus on réduit le nb de policiers ce qui aggrave leur condition de travail et celles des GàV. Le comble c'est que la violence augmente.

The first reader to react writes:

Enfin ! Après avoir été si longtemps la lanterne rouge de l'Europe en matière pénale (garde à vue, état des prisons, etc.), ce qui n'est quand même pas très brillant pour la supposée patrie des droits de l'homme, peut-être allons-nous faire quelques progrès ? Bravo à la Cour de Cassation !

EU Demonstrates that it’s Easily Defeated by Passive-Aggressive Taunts

"Such actions by EULEX do not at all contribute to stabilizing the situation on the ground, rather they only serve to fuel doubt and distrust among the Serbs," Bogdanović said, according to Beta news agency.

End of the world, you say? Serbs angered to a feverish pitch? What hideous sort of transgression are we talking about, anyway?

The Serbs from northern Kosovo held a protest rally at the Jarinje crossing on Oct. 7 against the installation of the antenna pole. Local government representatives said they had not been notified of EULEX's action.

Surely, the great peace loving master-diplomats of the universe will be able to get the situation in hand.

Elsewhere:

BELGRADE, 12. 10. 2010. President Boris Tadić meets with U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton in Belgrade

So which of them doesn’t look like they want to be there? Note too, the distinct lack of sniper fire to verify future claims.

Perhaps the most sycophantic article ever...

...and that says alot ..................and then some:

Lost Dreams

Now they are calling Obama a "weakling." But that's not fair. Naturally Barack Obama reacts in a more mature, adult way than his predecessor, George W. Bush. The problem is simply that Obama is smaller than the promise he made, and tiny in comparison to the hopes an entire nation placed on him in 2008. There's one thing that Barack Obama failed to do. That was his real failure, the big mistake he made, back when everything seemed possible.

This one goes out to a young man in Paris named Erik......

When discussion turns to France’s antiquated and underfinanced system of higher education, Gallic pride gives way to defensiveness and embarrassment

From food to fashion to architecture to transportation, the French take a justified pride in their country’s reputation for innovation

reports D. D. Guttenplan in the International Herald Tribune (more in Le Monde).

But when the discussion turns to France’s antiquated and underfinanced system of higher education, Gallic pride gives way to defensiveness, and even a certain embarrassment. In 2006, the best any French institution could do was 46th in the influential Shanghai rankings; this year France managed 39th place in two different rankings.

Denunciations of the “Anglo-Saxon” bias and arbitrary methodology of the rating systems was a common theme last week, when representatives from some 135 grandes écoles — literally “great schools,” the specialized academies of engineering, business, science and management that form the elite of the French higher education system — gathered in Paris for their annual conference.

…Born out of the French Enlightenment, the grandes écoles have long been the cradle of the governing class. [Their graduates] occupy a place in French national life similar to Oxbridge graduates in England or the Ivy League in the United States.

Internationally, however, these institutions have far less clout than their Anglo-American counterparts.

… Pierre Tapie, who heads the Conference of Grandes Écoles while also serving as president of the business school Essec, said foreigners found it difficult to understand France’s two-track system of higher education, which distinguishes between universities and the grandes écoles.

Why I'm Depressed (a Chain E-mail)

Over five thousand years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel, "Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land."

Nearly 75 years ago,(when Welfare was introduced) Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel, this is the Promised Land."

Today, the government has stolen your shovel, taxed your asses, raised the price of camels and mortgaged the Promised Land!

I was so depressed last night thinking about Health Care Plans, the economy, the wars, lost jobs, savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc . . . called a Suicide Hotline. I had to press 1 for English. I was connected to a call center in Pakistan. I told them I was suicidal.

They got excited and asked if I could drive a truck......

Shocker: Leftist Pacifist Who Ended France's Death Penalty Made Liberal Use of the Guillotine During Algerian War 25 Years Earlier

There are few things that enlightened Frenchmen enjoy more than attacking, ridiculing, and/or demonizing Americans for abhorrent features of American life, such as the death penalty and alleged wartime atrocities (along with racism and human rights violations). This is easier to do, needless to say, when their own failures are ignored and/or kept secret for an extended period of time, say, oh, 50 years or more. For example, François Mitterrand managed to win two seven-year terms to the French presidency without anybody — in the opposition, in the press, among historians — pointing out until the last year or so (and only with Mitterrand's connivance) that the proud leftist had served prominently in the Vichy government that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. Now, 15 years (!) after the Socialist leader left the Élysée palace, it transpires that the man who famously abolished the death penalty in France (after coming to power in 1981) liberally made use of the guillotine for Algerian rebels captured during the Algerian War…

Death sentences come raining down. The guillotine, never used against a nationalist from the beginning of "the events" [the Algerian uprising], started doing its work in Paris as well as in Algiers. The heads of the Fellaghas are lopped off at a rate not seen since the German occupation: on some days, up to five.

Look Ma, No Commies!... Wow! What a Difference!

Spiegel Online has a gallery of before and after photos of buildings and places in the Former East Germany. Much as it is that the word “utopia” actually means nowhere, collectivism means “it’s no-ones’”.

Confidence in and loyalty to the traditional parties of the German middle ground have markedly diminished

The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark: passionately democratic countries with strong creeds of tolerance, where parties of the right have now entered the political mainstream pushing anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic agendas.

That is how John Vinocur starts his International Herald Tribune article. The question that he (and it) asks — even as Chancellor Angela Merkel admits that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed" (actually, he asked it one week prior to Merkel's CDU speech) — is:

What are the chances that Germany escapes the emergence of its own version of the Sweden Democrats (who have just entered the Swedish Parliament), or Danish People’s Party (whose support props up a minority government in Denmark), or a figure like Geert Wilders, whose Party for Freedom now sits in third place as a Dutch vote-getter?

…confidence in and loyalty to the traditional parties of the German middle ground have markedly diminished.

These days, when it comes to the issue that has propelled anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic parties into greater power in Northern Europe — a sense among some citizens that Muslim newcomers are encroaching on their society without regard for its laws and standards — mainstream parties in Germany are starting to acknowledge they have not dealt with the concern anywhere near adequately.

…Intolerance, unmistakably, is part of the stock in trade of the new far-right outside Germany, but in most cases it does not replicate all of the classic rant of a party like France’s National Front: anti-capitalism, anti-American, and bigotry.

See You in November…

(Thanks to Damian…)

Origins: Anti-Globalization Founded as Marxist-Leninist Propaganda

Founded on the theory that those Mexicans didn't need jobs anyway, a typical "editorial" from the golden age of self-delusion. As if these regimes weren't in fact founded on the notion of making sure their entire population was an ill-remunerated near-slave workforce.



A Radio Berlin International broadcast from 1972. The goal wasn't to "liberate" anyone, but to nag , demonize,and construct another blood libel.

How to Seduce a Rich Girl

Conseil de drague de Mister W n°5 : séduire une fille riche
envoyé par Scoflaire_video. - Cliquez pour voir plus de vidéos marrantes.

Apparently, Mister W never reads Instapundit and the problems caused by pretending to be rich…

France Condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for the Police's Oppressive Treatment of the Country's Citizens

While enlightened Frenchmen are busy condemning those clueless American clods for their alleged human rights violations (as well as for their alleged racism and for their alleged war crimes), France was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (see Plantu cartoon) for the French police's heavy-handed approach towards its citizens (garde à vue)…

Hello Again, from “Cooking with Joe”

Tabbouli Salad

½ lb. medium fine burghul (crushed bulgur wheat)
2 bunches of green onions
5 bunches of parsley
2 bunches of fresh mint
2-1/2 lbs. fresh tomatoes
4 oz. olive oil or other salad oil
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepperWash the burghul half an hour before preparing the tabbouli. Dice the tomatoes. Chop parsley, green onions, and mint very fine. Mix all the ingredients together, adding oil and lemon juice gradually.

Serve on a platter leaving some of the chopped tomates to decorate the top of the platter, by making a one inch wide row along the circumference of the platter.
Beside this, one may also serve fresh leaves of lettuce, grape vine leaves, tender cabbage, or a combination of the three to be eaten with the tabbouli salad instead of pita bread.

Every Progressive Scion Has His Billy Carter

Jeb he ain’t.

Expect the media to suppress the hysteria that would otherwise be mandatory had a Republican been in the White House.

The Clausewitz approach

When your political/intellectual argument fails to persuade, there are always other ways to achieve your goals:

The best chance Sarkozy's opponents have of bringing down his pension bill is if strikes at oil refineries continue and start to threaten fuel supply, or if youths hit the streets en masse and set off violent scuffles.

No doubt the media would have the same David v. Goliath positive vibe if it were Le Pen's supporters whose best chance at foisting their ethos was to, "hit the streets en masse and set off violent scuffles".

Hatred, Neo-Nazi Messages, and (Filmed) Koran Burnings in a Peaceful French Region

"Leur violence, leur lâcheté, leur gratuité provoquent un sentiment de consternation et de dégoût."

While enlightened Frenchmen are busy condemning those clueless American clods for their alleged racism (as well as for their alleged human rights violations and for their alleged war crimes), Alsace erupts in an orgy of hatred, xenophobia, and racism coupled with neo-Nazi messages, car- and Koran-burning (followed by urinating on the smoldering embers of the Muslims' holy book), etc…

For some reason, French cartoonist Martin Vidberg manages to implicate John McCain ("McCain fries"?!?!) in the Koran burning! (Then again, the Arizona senator is emblematic of American conservatives…)

It’s Not a Haiku

If I could rename the “International” Geneva-based institutions to anything else, I would call it the “Fake-Crisis Emergency Management Center”

Defending Obama's Record As Compared to Bush's, NYT's Maureen Dowd Invokes… a Hollywood Movie?!

As even Maureen Dowd is forced to come to terms with the fact that larger and larger sections of America — even CNN — are asking “Was Bush Better President Than Obama?”, the indignant New York Times columnist goes on to make a colossal effort to remind Americans how the Bush White House "broke creative new ground in thuggery and skulduggery."

How does she proceed to do that? By writing …a review of …a Hollywood movie. The film about

…a respected undercover spy tracking Iraqi W.M.D. efforts … being hounded by the most powerful men on earth [Valerie Plame] … is a vivid reminder of one of the most egregious abuses of power in history, and there are deliciously diabolical turns by actors playing Scooter Libby, David Addington and Rove. Plame’s C.I.A. bosses are portraits in cravenness, cutting her loose at the moment she starts receiving death threats and her Iraqi sources become endangered.

Well, yes. Notwithstanding the fact that Fair Game is collaborative effort by leftist Bush- (and Cheney-)haters — director Doug Liman "does not use an Oliver Stone sledgehammer on history" is the best Maureen Dowd can say in the filmmakers' defense — it is the movie that Brent Bozell calls

the ridiculous Valerie Plame "docudrama" titled "Fair Game," complete with sound bites of her real-life congressional testimony. Those evil-Bush-years commercials will run in the [2010 mid-term] campaign's final weeks without a single reporter batting an eye.

Indeed. Remember that all this comes in the wake of Obama, and the Democrats, complaining about Republican propaganda and the undue influence of foreign operatives in the 2010 elections. However:

"Citizens United" is a court case that demonstrated how media and entertainment conglomerates get more power in a democracy than every other institution, and how conservative voices are often squashed and mocked by the liberal media. … By contrast, powerful Hollywood leftists had no problem getting their documentaries with political overtones widely distributed in theatres as Citizens United was being squashed.

But wait for the punchline.

And guess who's financed that "Fair Game" movie? A film company named Imagenation Abu Dhabi. The executive producer is Mohamed Khalaf al-Mazrouei, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Media Company. But [Barack] Obama won't be pounding the podium against that foreign influence.

The birthplace of de Beauvoir and Bardot may look Scandinavian in employment statistics, but it remains Latin in attitude

Courtesy of the state, French women seem to have it all

writes Katrin Bennhold on the front page of the International Herald Tribune as the New York Times bemoans, yet again, the alleged horrors of society (needless to say, Nordic nations were as usual top candidates for eulogies):

multiple children, a job and, often, a figure to die for. What they [French women] don’t have is equality: France ranks 46th in the World Economic Forum’s 2010 gender equality report, trailing the United States, most of Europe, but also Kazakhstan and Jamaica. … A recent 22-country survey by the Pew Research Center summed it up: three in four French people believe men have a better life than women, by far the highest share in any country polled.

“French women are exhausted,” said Valérie Toranian, editor-in-chief of Elle magazine in France. “We have the right to do what men do — as long as we also take care of the children, cook a delicious dinner and look immaculate. We have to be superwoman.”

The birthplace of Simone de Beauvoir and Brigitte Bardot may look Scandinavian in employment statistics, but it remains Latin in attitude. French women appear to worry about being feminine, not feminist, and French men often display a form of gallantry predating the 1789 revolution. Indeed, the liberation of French women can seem almost accidental — a byproduct of a paternalist state that takes children under its republican wings from toddler age and an obsession with natality rooted in three devastating wars.

…as the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy put it: “France is an old Gallic macho country.”

France crystallizes the paradox facing many women across the developed world in the early 21st century: They have more say over their sexuality (in France birth control and abortion are legal and subsidized), they have overtaken men in education and are catching up in the labor market, but few make it to the top of business or politics.

“Gandhi, the Satanic God of Peaceniks”

Michael Phillips discusses the idol of so many unwitting, unread buffoons who are otherwise easily distracted with fake Dreamcatchers and getting worked up over the great bee crisis just as easily.

My slight distaste for Gandhi, after reading dozens of dishonest biographies of him, comes down to the fact that he tried to win independence for parts of India, by threatening to have his followers support Hitler in WWII.

Because, y’know, he was into non-violence, and even though there would have been a lot of violence in Britain had Hitler turned the Indians on the UK, it would still be, like, non-violent.

And that’s, like, y’know, I can grok on that. Speak to us, O giant sculpture dude!

No Pasarán! Picking Up the Noble Fight Against Discrimination in Spain

In the latest battle in the age-old war against intolerable sexual discrimination, the Daily Telegraph's Barney Henderson reports that Spanish fathers have been given entitlement to breastfeeding leave from work (gracias para Duncan):

Europe's top court has declared that working fathers in Spain are entitled to take 'breastfeeding leave' everyday, even if the mother of the child is not employed.

Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that when the government taxes the rich, only the rich bear the burden

The New York Times gives some space to N Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard who makes the case against higher taxes for the rich…

I have to acknowledge that the Democrats are right about one thing: I can afford to pay more in taxes. My income is not in the same league as superstar actors and hedge fund managers, but I have been very lucky nonetheless. Unlike many other Americans, I don’t have trouble making ends meet. …

Nonetheless, as Republicans emphasize, taxes influence the decisions I make. I am regularly offered opportunities to earn extra money. It could be by talking to a business group, consulting on a legal case, giving a guest lecture, teaching summer school or writing an article. I turn down most but accept a few.

The author of some popular textbooks then supposes that some editor offers him $1,000 to write an article, showing what would happen should there be no taxes of any kind as compared to should the Bush tax cuts expire (Instapundit has more).

HERE’S the bottom line: Without any taxes, accepting that editor’s assignment would have yielded my children an extra $10,000. With taxes, it yields only $1,000. In effect, once the entire tax system is taken into account, my family’s marginal tax rate is about 90 percent. Is it any wonder that I turn down most of the money-making opportunities I am offered?

By contrast, without the tax increases advocated by the Obama administration, the numbers would look quite different. I would face a lower income tax rate, a lower Medicare tax rate, and no deduction phaseout or estate tax. Taking that writing assignment would yield my kids about $2,000. I would have twice the incentive to keep working.

Now you might not care if I supply less of my services to the marketplace — although, because you are reading this article, you are one of my customers. But I bet there are some high-income taxpayers whose services you enjoy.

…Like me, these individuals respond to incentives. (Indeed, some studies report that high-income taxpayers are particularly responsive to taxes.) As they face higher tax rates, their services will be in shorter supply.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether and how much the government should redistribute income. And, to be sure, the looming budget deficits require hard choices about spending and taxes. But don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that when the government taxes the rich, only the rich bear the burden.

No pop stars, no vocal show offs, just the Star Spangled Banner and the combined choirs of all four armed forces academies

(Thanks to Edy — I like the reaction of the Philadelphia Eagles' Jeremiah Trotter (#54) at 2:13…)

Just Another Lefty Gautag

Check out the leftynomics:

Solar panel operators receive a fixed tariff for every kilowatt hour of power they produce. That tariff is well above the standard market price for electricity, guaranteed for more than 20 years. The total subsidy payout over the last 10 years has been €60 to €80 billion. The yield has been modest by comparison. Solar power covers just 1.1 percent of German electricity requirements.

What’s even more hilarious, is that the author blames the Conservatives for “withholding the costs” of what the left’s fantasies of dystopic backwardness really are. Somehow, the Conservatives in power who are being buffaloed and berated into shutting down nuke plants and “transform” Germany are responsible for the fact that it might cost money, and not wishes or daisies.

That this notion would be expensive and unreliable was painfully obvious 20 years ago when households in Germany were still regularly taking delivery of oily Lignite coal. The fact that someone has waited until now to establish that their fantasies of power generation would cost 5 to 7 trillion Euro-smackeroos (2-3 YEARS for German GDP, by the way,) reveals the short term thinking of these louts so fond of telling others that they are such fantastic long term thinkers.

The Awakening of the Conservative Woman

Fire From the Heartland (thanks to Valerie)

Trying to Milk a Bull, are we?

In Spain it is now becoming increasingly difficult to show children the ways in which a man and a woman are different:

Europe's top court has declared that working fathers in Spain are entitled to take 'breastfeeding leave' everyday, even if the mother of the child is not employed.

Of course this is just a shrugged-shoulder matter of simply employing logic without any intent, rather than for judicial reasoning. Is the employed husband of an unemployed woman going to run home to attend to the wife’s nursing? Sure he is, right after he stops bitch slapping her.

The new legislation means that both the mother and father are allowed to leave work for an hour during the day or reduce their working day by half an hour during the first nine months following the birth of a child.



The European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled on Thursday that the Spanish law caused an "unjustified discrimination on grounds of sex" because fathers do not have the same rights as mothers.

The way to a European’s heart, and EU institutions know this, is for governments to be appearing to give people something for nothing, and this sounds like just that.

Socialism: Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

This is what happens when your choices in life are socialized:

This Saturday, one of Greece’s most respected newspapers, To Vima, reported that the nation’s largest government health insurance provider would no longer pay for special footwear for diabetes patients. Amputation is cheaper, says the Benefits Division of the state insurance provider.

To use a dental analogy, in East Germany crowns and fillings were not done to the degree that they would be in any civilized society. They simply pulled teeth until enough of them were gone by a certain age to justify dentures – one set – the lifetime allotment.

Greece’s National Healthcare System was created in the early 1980s, during the tenure of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. Papandreou, an academic, won election under the slogan, Αλλαγή, which is the Greek word for Change.

Emphasis mine. Sallow dyspepsia theirs.

Never mind the ways that they could be cut up, redistributive policies lead to degeneration of the WHOLE pie. It’s something that brings the motive and outcome of candidate Obama’s exchange with Joe the Plumber into sharp focus. Redistributive policies even shaft the people they try to help.

A European defense intellectual on Obama's resolve: “An America that debates whether it should win a war it’s in is a very frightening prospect”

Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars” … tends to reinforce the questions of some of the allies about the Obama administration’s resolve to stop the mullahs’ drive

writes John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

… in describing how the administration’s goals became fixated on finding a date when U.S. forces would begin to leave the country, and how the original objective of “defeating” the Taliban became “disrupting” them, and then “degrading” the insurgents, the book’s essential meaning for allied governments is likely to be in the indications it provides of a United States for which “winning” has become a soft notion, open to interpretation.

…a notion of nonurgency concerning Iran — while “Obama’s Wars” quotes Mr. Obama’s maxim for Afghanistan as being “Faster in, faster out” — has not gone down easily with countries like France, Britain and Israel who rely on their own estimates of a narrower time frame for confronting Tehran.

Indeed, it contrasted with a statement from a high official of a European allied nation three weeks ago that, in relation to Iran’s nuclear plans, any “further loss of time will be disastrous.”

As for the book, it goes to doubts — expressed semi-privately by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France — about the U.S. president’s basic views of the world and America’s concept in 2010 of victory and defeat.

…the author told of asking the president directly, “You can’t lose a war or be perceived to lose one, can you?”

Mr. Woodward said Mr. Obama replied: “I think about it not so much in the classic, do you lose a war on my watch? (sic) I think about it more in terms of, do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end of it?”

The remark might sound vague in relation to America’s presumed instincts. It is neither the omnipresent win or lose of American sports, nor the profit-and-loss, black-ink, red-ink ledgers of American business and American life.

I asked someone who might be called a European defense intellectual with close ties to the French government about that. The reply: “An America that debates whether it should win a war it’s in is a very frightening prospect.”

Readers of Mr. Woodward’s book will also note that it does not prophesy less ambiguity soon about the United States’ level of military determination.

From the Empty World of Leftist Propaganda

Permit me to present an excerpt from a 1981 East German publication for agitators. It was meant to give small-time propagandists who were supposed to work the barracks, the factory floor, and the like, examples of successful preaching to the imprisoned.

One choise piece provides an example of the limits of truthiness:

Italy: What are the Causes of Terrorist Actions?

The new year began in Italy as the old one had ended: with terrorist actions. On 31 December, Police General Enrico Calvaligi was shot at the front door of his home. In January, the kidnapping of Judge Giovanni D’Urso occupied public attention until he was a released. These were only the latest in a long chain of events that began on 12 December 1969 with a bomb at the Agricultural Bank in Milan and reached its high point so far on Bologna on 2 August 1980 when 85 people were killed and more than 200 injured. What are the causes of these terrorist actions, which have affected Italy in particular, but also other capitalist countries?

Bourgeois and social reformist ideologists and politicians generally, reject the claim that the roots are in the capitalist system. Explaining the causes, however, requires considering the whole interrelated complex of objective and subjective of economic, social, political, and ideological factors, and they develop from the nature of the capitalist system!

In the socio-economic area, terrorism is bred complex of factors of new and old contradictions, in the backwardness of the south, and particularly the sharpness of the economic crisis and its results. The inflation rate in 1980 was above 20 percent throughout the year, at the top of the leading capitalist states, and unemployment according to official figures remained at about 1.7 million, about 50 percent of whom are young people. In a situation of general uncertainty, extremist and anarchist ideas spread among dissatisfied and politically immature young people who want revenge on the bourgeois state. In this milieu, adventurers find an audience for their calls for “direct action” and terrorist acts, which they claim are the quickest path to social change. The crisis is also hard on the middle class, and produces not only anti-monopolistic views, but also radical views to the right and the “left.” Demagogic appeals to national sentiments, or to economic and social difficulties and social problems, allow neo-fascist and “leftist” extremist groups to win supporters in various social levels — from the poorest farmers in the south to some tradesmen, businessmen, civil servants, and students.

The two were, of course, kidnapped by the Red Brigade, well known for their “right wing views” to the East German listener of this bromide, and who were trained, plosletyzed to, and funded by the intelligence agencies of the Warsaw pact,making the entire thing a “Daddy drinks because you cry” type of argument.

Texas drinks a mojito

(…although how can you enjoy a mojito if there is no alcohol inside?!)

Plantu: “I Detest You, but keep Spending your Dollars Here”

To me, Plantu brings to mind the image of a grinning idiot in a ragged suit cranking the handle of a calliope. And that's largly how he's characterizing the President if you look more closely.

It's interesting to see that he signifies the President by drawing his non-specific generic negro minstrel figure. Good work there, spanky. You'll really get somewhere with that attitude.

The Birth of Freedom

The Birth of Freedom: Why would anyone believe that all men are created equal? That all should be free? That all deserve a voice in choosing their leaders? Why would any nation consider this a self-evident truth?

Mr. Wen’s Rendezvous with Density

Precisely Because of the Extreme Violence of France's Gangsters, French Police Will Not Intervene During a Hold-Up

It would seem that the new generation of gangsters in the Lyon area have not heard that violence only occurs in America (aka the land of the nutty gun-lovers). Indeed, the — very young — criminals, who seem to come from la banlieue and who seem to base their attacks on the video games that they play, writes Richard Schittly in Le Monde, are multiplying hold-ups with an extreme violence. It is precisely for that reason, we learn, moreover, that the police will not intervene during the hold-up of a bank or a jewelry shop.

« Dans ce genre de situation, une intervention risque de déclencher une fusillade en plein centre-ville, on choisit de ne pas les intercepter immédiatement », justifie un commissaire de police.

Today on "Cooking with Joe"

A Legacy left behind by the Red Army: Soljanka

Of which there were very few, but like that evil genius Ripley’s love of Gulasch, mine is a weakness for Soljanka, a picante soup made popular among Eastern Germans by way of contact with their Soviet military comrades / douchebags / occupiers.

I have translated the recipe from the original Klingon, to which I’ve added my personal touches:

- 200 g /7-8 oz. of Yellow onion, finely chopped (avoid the vidalias or any new-fangled mild varieties)
- 100 g /3-1/2 oz. of unsliced bacon, cubed into small pieces
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 100 g /3-1/2 oz. of Tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon of Paprika
- 2 medium sized pickles (dill or sour are best), “julienne” cut to the extent one can with a pickle
- 500 g of meat: sausage, leftovers, or trimmed tips of pork or ham (anything, really, even leftover chicken!)
- (Add a tbp. of butter, if the meats are all lean.)
- 1,5 liters/ 3 pints of Beef stock (powdered stock may also be used, but omit the salt if you do)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon of capers

For decoration:

- Thin lemon wedges (thin sliced rings cut into triangles)
- Sour crème
- Dill

Optional:

- Parsley
- A few sliced olives, or any other pickled favorites.
- Pepperoncini (one of my favorites)

Preparation:

Sauté the onions and bacon in the bottom of your soup pot, until the onions clarify. Do not let them brown.
Add all of the meats, pickles, and paprika for a few moments until they soften.
Then pour in the soup stock.
Add the lemon wedges to the stock, salt and pepper to taste.
Let it come to a boil, and then let it simmer for at least 15 minutes and up to 45 minutes.
Just prior to serving, add the capers, and all the optional faves, as well as the sour crème dollop right in the middle of the bowl.

Decorate with small lemon wedges an a small dollop of sour crème. Some prefer the sour crème “on the side”, or otherwise spoon out the amount they deem excessive prior to stirring it in. Some the dill reserved from preparation is also a good thing to drizzle on top.

Makes 4 servings, or 2 if served without any other dish. Serve with rye or black bread on the side, the gamiest smelling type that you can find.

This is one of the simpler recipes, prone to a more pickle dominated taste, but is easily tempered by using a little bit more bacon or sausage.

Click on the photo for an excellent Ukranian Soljanka recipe, which has a much fresher taste, not masked as heavily by the tomato paste. It should take on the taste of creative variations more readily.

Dear Reader, You Know the Routine

The consensus opinion takes a hit, below the water:

Americans are divided over whether President Barack Obama or his predecessor has performed better in the White House, according to a new national poll.

And a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday also indicates in the battle for Congress, Republicans hold large advantages over the Democrats among independents, men and blue-collar whites. The poll also indicates that Republicans are much more enthusiastic than Democrats to vote.

By 47 to 45 percent, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush. But that two point margin is down from a 23 point advantage one year ago.

"Democrats may want to think twice about bringing up former President George W. Bush's name while campaigning this year," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.



No doubt the reality-based community is readying the new and updated signs. Afterall, it is a search for truth .............. right?

Why did God invent YouTube?

So we could watch Ladytron, naturally:

By an Amazing Coindidence, Muslims Built a Mosque at the Exact Place Where a Foreign Religion Treasured a Revered Spot

How incredible! It just so happens that, by an amazing coincidence, ancient Muslims in India happened to build the mosque of Barbi Masjid at Ayodhya, the birthplace of one of Hinduism’s most revered deities, Ram, where a Hindu temple seems to have existed beforehand. Jim Yardley:

Lawyers for Hindu groups … contended that a temple to Ram had existed on the site until it was demolished to make way for the Babri Masjid, constructed in the 16th century by India’s first Mughal ruler.

"India’s first Mughal ruler" is not incorrect in this case, but one wonders whether it is not a way to avoid saying "India’s first Muslim ruler". According to Hindus, furthermore, "Ram was born beneath the central dome of the destroyed structure." What an amazing coincidence is that?! Muslims just happened to build a mosque on the exact place where another, non-Muslim religion had one of their most revered spots and where the ruins of that other, non-Muslim religion's temple happened to be…

And this sort of recurring fact seems to escape the (more-intelligent-and-more-suave-than-the-average-clueless-American-clod) journalists of the New York Times (which elsewhere refers to "the Republican Party's rabble-rousing tea partiers"), when writing a hit piece on someone like Pamela Gellar…

With Mayo on the Side, Please

Eye of Pickled Newt



Or some-such. Actually, I think that thing on the left is part ibex and part squid.

Zip it! I’m Sayin’ a Sooth, Here!

This Fall in America, It will be the Tea Party Movement versus the Cocktail Party Movement.

What I See

It seems to me that Uncle Sam, the eternal multilateralist, is learning his lesson all over again – and sweating it out. The Apathetic European standing next to him seems to be enjoying watching the waifish innocent townsfolk die at the hands of tin pot dictators and insurgents, while manning his precambrian Monty Python-esque artillery.

Oh, Swell: Time to Bring Out Yet Another Stereotypical Cartoon!

A report on cyberwar in Le Monde by Yves Eudes (also an article on the worm that attacked the U.S. Army) is the occasion for Rocco to practice his evil-and-cruel-shark-toothed-Yankee-soldier cartooning…

Meanwhile, articles such as the Nathalie Guibert piece on France's defense measures or the Yves Eudes piece on NATO's Estonia defense tactics or the Jean-Pierre Stroobants piece on cybercriminality in the EU are laconically illustrated by photos like that of a gendarme at his computer…

Oh, Goody: Time to Bring Out Another Stereotypical Cartoon!

The scandal, real or alleged, of a European food agency president's belonging to the agro-alimentary lobby, as reported by Hervé Kempf in Le Monde — the information was uncovered by our old friend José Bové — allows Serguei to draw one of his typical fat-evil-cigar-smokin'-capitalist-lording-over-the-little-people cartoons.

This is what Social Progressives in the Near East Look Like

Gay Saudi prince 'murdered servant in ferocious attack'

Hey, he’s got all the right credientials... a gay ‘outsider’, aristocratic wealth that’s counteracted by the cred, a willingness to take ‘direct action’, a sense of entitlement, and, let’s face it, an unknown with political access.

On the surface, any number of towns on the west cioast of the United States would elect him to their city councils on the strength of ‘celebrating his identity’ alone.

Spaddacus! I loved you Like a Foddah!

So long Signalman SM3c Bernard Schwartz. You’ll always be first rate.

What Else Happened During the Union Donkey Show?

With an effect on the U.S. territories of the Pacific, Guam, American Samoa, etal., Congress passed a “living wage” law some years back. Phased in in stages, it’s was meant to bring “diginity” etc., etc., and such like to a population largely used as a congressional plaything most of the time.

They said it is in nobody's interest-not workers, not businesses, and not the government-for uncontrolled cost increases to lead to business closures.

But something rather interesting happened on Saturday. A bill delaying the next $0.50/hour minimum wage hike until 2012 was signed by President Social-Justice, having been the culmination of a rushed through congressional voting process.

Even Radio New Zealand International reported that Democrats feared that Republicans with a view to making people sleep in the bed that they made, would not sign on, but the measure to suppress a minimum wage hike got through with full support of the left.

Moreover, the hourly wage increase couldn't have come at the worst possible time when the CNMI government has been partially shutdown effective Oct. 1 because of a lack of a timely passed balanced budget. Among other things, the shutdown means over 1,400 government employees will be temporarily out of job, until a budget is passed and signed into law.

Why did they do it? To reduce unemployment, and protect jobs and employers at a time when the economy is so uncertain.

Let's see ... What ELSE happened that day? Hm. Not much I guess, other than a horribly contrived Union and fringe-political set-up rally at the Lincoln Memorial, supported by the whole of Leftist Flunkydom who when not adapting to the free markets in the U.S. Territories, is advocating full unionization of the U.S. workforce to levels above both the market value for that work, and the value at which those employers can viably remain in business.

The “One Nation Working Together" Donkey show was not a gathering of individuals who came on their own of their own volition, it was an amalgam of dial-a-mob operations ranging from Union organizers to Trotskyites to “Anarchists”, and all the passive-aggressive fig-leaf “cause organization” trying to make the crackpot left look like they’re involved in feeding poor waifs on the streets, housing, and whatever else they think makes their political factions indispensable to humanity.

It was many things, but it was not a spontaneous expression of individuals thinking freely and joining together to make a point. It was paid for in large part with union dues, grant money, and had paid organizers whose business is constructing the appearance of sincerity and providing lunch and portable toilets, and generally being venal for a living.

I wonder if the U.S. Overseas Territory minimum wage hike freeze issue was presented by anyone who voted for is at the “One Nation Working Together” theatrics? I sort of doubt it.

It brought together a variety of left leaning groups fighting for these themes, as well as LGBT rights, comprehensive immigration reform, peace, civil rights, environmental protection, and worker’s rights.

One wonders how their stated, if not their expanded (to include the usual rainbow umbrella) collection of issues not related to economy, and especially not related to the general population of the nation – would be treated by Samoans trying to save their jobs.

Samoans vs. Professional LGBT political agitators. Hm. Professional LGBT political agitators vs. Samoans. Seriously, are these fringe loons crash-testing America the brain-trust or what?

"In Reality", Putin and Medvedev Do Not Believe in the Obama Administration's "Reset Button" Strategy

Even if Vladimir Putin has softened his foreign policy language and even if Dimitri Medvedev has put a smile on the face's régime towards the West, says political analyst Lilia Chevtsova, interviewed by Le Monde's Piotr Smolar, "in reality" the Russian leadership doesn't believe in the Obama administration's "Reset Button" strategy…

…en matière de politique étrangère, n'y a-t-il pas un nouveau pragmatisme ?

La crise internationale a imposé la nécessité d'une diversification de l'économie. Elle a poussé le régime à arborer un sourire sur son visage à destination de l'Ouest. C'est le rôle de Medvedev. Même si Poutine, lui aussi, a adouci sa rhétorique, il ne croit pas, en réalité, au « reset button » [relance des relations] proposé par l'administration Obama.

Like, Way!

Co-op shopping, off-smelling wheat germ in yellowish plastic eating wierdos beware: Syd and Om are coming!


Elsewhere: Greenpeace are Saudi Arabia’s servile flunkies.

Saudi Arabia knows it can’t lobby against Canada, their chief competitor. That would cause a backlash, and increase demand for our oil by consumers. But Saudi Arabia doesn’t have to say a word, with groups like Greenpeace out and about. They’ll do all the oilsands-bashing for them.

Greenpeace is good at bashing oil — but only in very safe countries. They’ve never had a protest, or even a press conference, in Riyadh or Tehran.

"Our Time Has Come": It's Tea Time in the UK

With the British Tea Party that he launched in February, Daniel Hannan is trying to get his fellow Britons to follow in the wake of their cousins across the Pond, writes Virginie Malingre in Le Monde. In a country that has public spending increase from 38% in 2o00 to 48% today, he is joined by the likes of Matthew Elliott's Taxpayers' Alliance (TPA).

…la TPA fait évoluer le débat. A force de marteler, sans répit et exemples à l'appui, que l'argent des contribuables est gaspillé, "elle a acquis une forte influence", juge Tony Travers, politologue à la London School of Economics. D'ailleurs ni le Labour, ni les tories, ni les lib-dem n'ont fait campagne, en 2010, sur un Etat plus fort.

A SitRep from the Happiest Place on Earth

And I’m not kidding you. Your average garden variety European Ivan Ivanovich really DOES think that a certain country, population, etc., can be objectified in such a way that they will clam being the happiest people on earth, despite the stunning and enduring tradition of having a high suicide rate.

“Danish ghettos ravaged by fire,” alerts the Jyllands-Posten. Every week in troubled Danish neighbourhoods, four fires on average burn down kindergartens, trash containers, cars and motor scooters, reports the Danish daily, based on fire department reports in the country’s three biggest cities.

According to one sociologist quoted in the paper, these acts are perpetrated by a hard core of ethnic youths who want their neighbourhoods to “take on the image of a dangerous ghetto”.

Because in a life where nothing matters, your biggest complaint can be either some detached social issue, a fake crisis of some sort, or the fact that your precious, tidy, overpriced society isn’t enough like a first-person shooter game, or your image of da hood.

Magnificent

A message from Andie for Sunday (thanks to Mark)

”Caring mayor wants Roma register”

Why does their “caring” sound so much like a cross between pandering and fascism?

“Ethnic registration for Roma”, headlines De Volkskrant. Social democratic mayor Cor de Vos of Nieuwegein, a town in the central Holland, says that councils with the largest Roma populations should keep an ethnic register of the community. “We are dealing with a group of people which is not integrated in Dutch society,” he declared.

If that’s the case, why don’t they “register” gays and anyone who might haver ever practiced Islam?

“They need to be helped, for their own sake and that of their neighbourhood. But we can’t do that without knowing their situation.” Last Wednesday it was revealed that the city council of Ede has been holding police, child welfare and justice department files on the Roma since 1978. The council apologised but also said: “The law isn't in step with the issues.

And of course that was bad, and wrong. Sooooo in the interest of “caring”, there will be a lot more of it.

What next? Tattooed registration numbers to “show you care”?

Just to Tell you how Much they Care About People...

... a terror warning had to be played down because it elicited European complaints over the fear of lost travel revenue:

The Obama administration will warn U.S. citizens to be vigilant as they travel in Europe, providing updated guidance prompted by al-Qaida threats, American and European officials told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Such a move could have negative implications for European tourism, business and diplomacy if travelers fear there's a possibility of terror attacks.

Eight Germans and two British brothers are at the heart of the al-Qaida-linked terror plot against European cities.