LEFTIST NOSTALGIA

Eric Hobshawm on Gorbachev in the LRB (hat-tip BELGRAVIA DISPATCH):

"All the same, if I were a Russian I would also think of him as the man who brought ruin to his country."

Yeah, sure... and the Iraqis were better off under Saddam!

WHAT IS IT ABOUT LEFTISTS THAT MAKES THEM SO NOSTALGIC FOR ANTI-AMERICAN TYRANTS!? (I think the answer is in the question!)

ALSO: This Hobshawm quote is ANOTHER example of Leftist double standards/moving goalposts.

When it comes to Gitmo Leftists say: "Human rights are everything; (it matters not that the detainees get better food/health than at home; they need lawyers!" BUT when it comes to the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan, Leftists say: "It matters not that Afghanis and Iraqis are 'free' - 'freedom' is a meaningless thing without safe schools and streets and guaranteed healthcare."

What's MOST PATHETIC is that the Left're only fooling themselves!

Bush: Baathist totalitarianism :: Reagan : Soviet totalitarianism.

Hobshawm : socialist tyrants :: Sidney Blumenthal : Clinton.

I'll know the GWOT will be over when oldtime Lefties like Hobshawm and Left-wing groups like Amnesty International stop attacking Bush and start attacking socialist tyrants like Mugabe and Kim and Chavez and Fidel and Putin and China.

A SONG FOR HARRY REID - in honor of the 5 most recently confirmed federal judges

Do you know a Harry Reid fan? That's a Leftie who thinks that - when it comes to federal judgeships - the minority party (in one body of Congress) should have a veto over the majority party and the president. Well, invite him or her over to your computer and click HERE. Then gloat. Before they storm off, just say this: ELECTIONS MATTER!

BUSH AND BLAIR AGREE ON AFRICAN DEBT RELIEF

According to the NTIMES, Bush and Blair have agreed in principle to massive multi-billion dollar debt relief for more than a dozen impoverished nations.

The plan would free 18 countries, most of which are in Africa, from any obligation to repay the estimated $16.7 billion they owe the international lenders, said the official, who requested anonymity because a formal announcement of the agreement had not been made. The debts will be written off by the lenders in an effort to allow the debtor countries to start fresh, get their books in order and eventually be able to borrow again for economic development, health, education and social programs, rather than simply to repay existing loans.

I WONDER HOW THE LEFT, AND THE MSM THEY DOMINATE, WILL SPIN THIS INTO AN ANTI-BUSH/ANTI-GOP TIRADE? Maybe they'll claim that the approach that Bush favors amounts to nothing more than handing out tax relief to the banks that hold the debt? Here's why I suspect this approach (from the NYTIMES article):

"One approach, favored by Britain, was for the rich nations to take over responsibility for repaying the debts. The second method, favored by the United States, was for the loans to be written off entirely by the lenders."

Stay tuned...

WILL BOLIVIA TAKE THE "CALLE" TO SERFDOM?

One of the forces driving Bolivia to oust their president and nearly bring on civil war is NATIONALIZATION. It's one of the most important issues according to CNN: "Nationalization of Bolivia's oil industry, which protesters believe would better distribute wealth. Privatization and plans to export gas have sparked fears that only wealthy Bolivians and corporations would benefit." YUP: the Bolivian left wants to nationalize their mining industry. And REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH.

Contrary to what Left-wing ideologues & demogogues will tell you, nationalization and redistribution have ALWAYS failed to increase abundance, and have NEVER FAILED TO INCREASE POVERTY. NEED PROOF? Just look at South Korea (versus North Korea), India (post-Rao) China (post-Deng Xiao Ping) Poland & the Czech Republic and the rest of Eastern Europe (post-USSR) and even the post-Thatcher UK; they ALL PROVE that nationalization sucks and private enterprise WORKS. Or look at it in reverse: Mugabe and Chavez are RUINING their nation's economies (by instituting socialism) - as Castro ruined his.

Left-wing politicians get away with their demogoguery only because the Left-wing dominated media and schools have brainwashed enough of the public. The internet can change that: by exposing the media and the academy - and the Leftist garbage they regurgitate - to proper scrutiny.

MORE LEFTIST "GOAL-POST MOVING"

Since the Iraqis have gained their freedom & democracy the Left decries their bad infrastructure and the lack of schools and troubled healthcare system & exploding oil-pipelines - AS IF MATERIAL SECURITY WAS EVERYTHING.

When enemy-combatant/neojihadis are imprisoned in Gitmo - and get 3 square meals and clean beds and clean clothes and healthcare and dental-care, the Left decries their lack of legal representation & due process - AS IF LIBERTY & HUMAN RIGHTS WAS EVERYTHING.

No matter what W does (liberates 50 million people from totalitarian tyranny), or why (9/11), the Left complains. That the complaints are inconsistent matters not to the Left. The Left isn't bothered by REALITY; when reality interferes with their ideology, they just move the goal posts! Goal-post moving exposes their true motives (BDS), and the utter emptiness of their ideology. The fact is: Leftism has nothing else to offer anymore.

MORE HERE.

DUMPING INCOME TAX FOR NATIONAL SALES TAX MOOTS MOST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION WOES

One of the reasons illegal immigration is bad is that most of the illegals don't pay taxes even though they use services - like roads; utilities; schools; and hospitals. They drain the public coffers and effectively cause tax rates (to citizens who do pay taxes) to be higher than they might otherwise be.

If instead of a "progressive" federal income tax we had a national sales tax (of let's say... 15%) then ALL illegals would have to pay taxes - they could not evade them. (WHAT IS MORE: this would effectively REDUCE the "take-home-pay" of the illegals and reduce the incentive they have to accept lower pay, and it would pressure employers who exploit illegals to pay them more; this in turn would put pressure on employers to raises wages for everyone.) To lessen the burden on poor citizens the federal government could send a refund to poor people amounting to 100% of their national sales tax; for instance a person earning $25,000 could get a refund of $3750.

Since illegals could NOT file for a refund, they be FORCED to contribute money back to the nation they currently give only their sweat to; (they send money OUT of the country - effectively "taxing" themselves to the benefit of other nations, notably Mexico: illegal immmigrants sending dollars back there are the SECOND leading source of income for Mexico (after petroleum).

Realistically, for a national sales tax to generate enough revenue for the federal budget it would either have to be about 20% on retail sales, or we'd have to tax more things than just retail. A 5% tax on EVERY TRANSACTION would generate enough - but taxing wholesale sales and stock purchases (as opposed to a tax merely on gains/profits) might be impossible to achieve. It's more likely that Congress passes tax reform bill which combines a low, flat income tax and a low, flat retail sales tax. This would only alleviate the illegal immigrant free-ride, noty eliminate it.

MORE ON TAX REFORM HERE - AT OTB; AND ALSO AT FAIRTAX.ORG.

DEAN IS A LOSER

For all his vaunted grassroots/internet fundraising, Dean finished 4th in Iowa and quickly became the laughingstock of the media: AARRRRRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So now I'm supposed to be surprised that Dean is self-destructing and taking the Democrats with him?!

Dean was ALWAYS a loose cannon and a loser. The fact that the Dems selected him to head their party PROVES they're a party of extremists and wackos and losers and complainers WHO ARE NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME - ESPECIALLY DURING WARTIME! When they ditch him and pick a Robert Strauss-type, then and only then MIGHT they have a chance at reversing their downward spiral.

UPDATE: Click HERE (Lily and Vince) for a list of DEAN'S STUPID COMMENTS - and a catchy remix of Dean's infamous scream; (hat-tip OTB).

KYOTO : REVERSING GLOBAL WARMING :: EU CONSTITUTION : UNITING EUROPE

KYOTO exempts China and the Third World from any emissions limits, instead forcing all the reductiuons in so-called "greenhouse gases" from developed nations. This is why the US SENATE passed a resolution in 1998 - called THE BYRD-HAGEL RESOLUTION and supported by Kerry and 94 other Senators (YUP: it passed 95-0!) - which effectively killed any chance that the USA woud ever become a signatory to KYOTO.

KYOTO is a flawed treaty which does NOT properly address nor would it necessarily reverse "global warming." What is more, there is NO CONCLUSIVE PROOF that "global warming" is man-made - or even really global. In other words KYOTO is a bad treaty which was written to correct a problem which might NOT be needing any correction.

Which is why it's a lot like the EU Constitution - (which is also technically a treaty). The EU Constitution is a treaty which was written poorly and which was intended to correct problems which might not even REALLY exist.

When a terminal illness is MISDIAGNOSED and treated with the wrong medicine, and the medicine is made so poorly that it's poisonous, well then the illness ain't gonna go away and the patient is gonna die. The environazis and the pan-European socialists are - figuratively speaking - each peddling faulty diagnoses and bad medicine.

The voters of France and Holland - like 95 Senators in 1998 - GOT IT! The French and Dutch understood that the EU Constitution Treaty was bad, and rejected it - just as 95 Senators knew that KYOTO sucked.

WHAT'S AHEAD? Well, only after the EU gets rid of its socialists (who are, BTW, also environazis) can they realistically take up writing a new constitution - and DITCH KYOTO and write a new treaty to reduce air pollution by EVERY nation.

UPDATE: WELCOME BASIL'S BLOG READERS! If you aren't one yet - you should be at least three times a day: Basil goes good with meals!

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE LEFT'S "IS/AS CONFLATION"

Powerline - and others, notably DISSECTING LEFT and this blog - have noted that the Left seems to continually use analogies and metaphors instead of deductive reasoning and rational arguments. I have described this as the "IS/AS Conflation" because it is typically most obvious when someone treats an analogical comparison ("that man sings like a bird") as if it had an ontological verity (that man who sings like a bird is a bird. OR: "The USSR had secretive prisons known as gulags; Gitmo is LIKE a secretive prison; therefore Gitmo IS a gulag." FOR ANOTHER EXAMPLE CLICK HERE.).

A.N. Whitehead called this logical error "The Fallacy of the Misplaced Concreteness."

Part of the Left's predilection for mistaking the "poetic" for the "real" is the result of the fact that Leftists are leading practitioners of (victims of?) post-modernism - which is not only anti-West and anti-bourgoise, but anti-reason.

TODAY - (literally and figuratively!) - gives us another salient example of this common error. Here is the item - hat-tip THE AMERICAN THINKER -

NBC's Katie Couric treated UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is mired in a scandal Couric only lightly touched, as a wise sage, empathetically ending her taped interview with him, which aired on Tuesday's Today: "You literally have the weight of the world on your shoulders." He agreed: "I do, but not everybody understands that." [UMPH added!]

Of course, Couric was TOTALLY WRONG to describe Annan as LITERALLY having the weight of the world on his shoulders; she would have been correct to say that he FIGURATIVELY had the weight of the world on his shoulders. (Annan literally had ONLY the weight of his shirt and suit-jacket on his shoulders.)

As WARREN BELL wrote over at NRO:

KATIE COURIC IS LITERALLY DUMB AS A POST [Warren Bell]

Did she really say "literally have the weight the world on your shoulders"? Because if that were true, Kofi Annan would literally be crushed instantaneously into a pancake of infinite thinness. We're sticklers on a few points of usage in the Bell household, and the constant misuse of "literally" is public enemy number one. That a journalist of Ms. Couric's stature (smirk!) would say "literally" when she means its exact opposite -- "figuratively" -- makes my blood boil.But not literally, because then my boiling blood would come shooting out of my eyes and ears and get on the dog, with whom I arose at 5 AM today.

I am contending that by mispeaking - and doing it so badly - Couric exposes more than her grammatical mediocrity; she exposes her inner Leftist. She mispoke because the distinction between literal truth and figurative approximation is one that her Leftist-biased mind can no longer distinguish.

I have long argued that people who have a psychological diathesis for conflating "is" with "as" are more prone to being suckered by post-modernist mumbo-jumbo and swept up by Leftist ideology - and it best explains why Leftism persists even though it has utterly failed everywhere and everytime it has ever been tried. It persists because people who are illogical find it satisfying. Which - if it's true - points us toward the ultimate cure for Leftism: mandatory LOGIC CLASSES in every high school.

UPDATE: WELCOME BETSY'S PAGE READERS! Please check out a few other posts while your here.

REAGAN

It's been on year since he crossed over. Check out a remembrance at JACKSON'S JUNCTION.

IRAQIS VERSUS PALESTINIANS

Between the Iraqis and the Palestinians, only one is demonstrating it has the will to succeed as a democracy: IRAQ.

1 - On January 31, the Iraqis went to the polls and voted under circumstances WAY WORSE than any now in Gaza and the West Bank. They DID NOT delay the election; Abbas just has - to some future date "UNKNOWN."

2 - The Iraqis are undertaking to DESTROY their neojihadist "insurgency" while Abbas merely talks to Hamas - quite INNEFECTIVELY at that.

Unless and until Abbas and the Palestinian "moderates" demostrate at least HALF the courage of the Iraqis - and actually confront their neojihadists THEY WILL HAVE NO STATE AND THERE WILL BE NO PEACE.