Monthly Archives: February 2018

Counting on bad news

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From a comment on Democrats are surprised that more money in pay checks is popular. The reality is, however, that a good economy is background, and even then no one knows what the economy will be like in 2020. It is still a knife-edge and even if the economy is great, which it never is for most people, it is the thousand other issues that will matter. The Dems and the media remain coiled and ready to strike, setting things up for when fate creates an opportunity to steal an election. Opposition is much easier than government since oppositions are never held responsible for what goes wrong even if they often are through what they prevent a government from doing. It’s not over till it’s over, and as we have already found out, even then it’s not over. Thus:

Don’t mistake the intent of those who comprise the opposition. As with the down fall of President Nixon, the dems can’t do anything without the collaboration of the GOPe.

Mueller is dragging out the investigation in the hopes the GOPe gives Congress back to the dems. Impeachment is a political process not a judicial one. The opposition has a ten to one advantage in the media. They ignore any evidence that exonerates Trump and continue to push their false narrative. If the dems wwere to prevail in the House, they will be serious about inpeachment. If they win in the Senate they will be sure to stop Trump in his tracks.

This is all made more ominous by the collaboration of the leadership of the GOPe. When you have the Bushes, Romney, McCain, McConnell, McMullin, Kristol, et al opposed to you, that’s a serious headwind.

The sentiment of our age is socialist. Nothing in relation to this sentiment will change between now and 2020.

Ingratitude and ignorance

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This is from Powerline: Churchill in Five Minutes. We are an ignorant and ungrateful age though whether we are exceptional in this is hard to tell. The ingratitude for our ancestral struggles I have been mulling over ever since driving along the Western Front during August 2014 on the hundredth anniversary of the start of World War I, a conflict almost as crucial in the defence of freedom as the war that followed, has only deepened as I watch the disdain for our own past growing among the narcissist left. Even there on the day that World War I began there were no ceremonies I came across, with nothing of much interest in the pages of the press. Maybe ever thus, but there must have been a long period of time when Agincourt was a live memory. Today nothing, not for WWI and now even WWII, other than fake analogies with Nazis and Hitler everywhere to be seen. Anyway, it is good to see this recognition for Winston Churchill, the Man of the Century.

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PragerU enlisted the services of the prominent historian Andrew Roberts to give its short course on “Winston Churchill: The man who saved the free world” (video below). It’s a good title and Roberts knows what he is talking about. He is the author of The Storm of War: A New History of World War II and the forthcoming biography Churchill: Walking with Destiny (also a good title, drawn from the concluding paragraph of The Gathering Storm).

The linked PragerU page includes a set of additional points, citations, and sources. The comments posted at YouTube include nitpicking about the video’s maps. The comments miss the point. This is the point: “The point about Churchill in 1940 is not that he stopped the German invasion, but that he stopped the British government making peace.” Sometimes you have to give war a chance.

I learned of the video via Roberts’s Twitter feed. It seems to be a box office hit in its own right.

Andrew Roberts@aroberts_andrew

My short video for @DennisPrager on Winston Churchill has received nearly 300,000 views in 4 days: https://www.prageru.com/videos/churchill-man-who-saved-free-world … Fun to make too

Churchill: The Man Who Saved the Free World

The West is free today thanks in large part to one man – Winston Churchill. Historian and bestselling author Andrew Roberts explains how Churchill saved the world from Nazi Germany.

Here is the concluding paragraph of The Gathering Storm, giving us Churchill’s thoughts on the evening of May 10, 1940: “During the last crowded days of the political crisis, my pulse had not quickened at any moment. I took it all as it came. But I cannot conceal from the reader of this truthful account that as I went to bed at about 3 A. M., I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. Eleven years in the political wilderness had freed me from ordinary party antagonisms. My warnings over the last six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me. I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.”

Coalition sense on IR

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I imagine The Australian made this the first thing they told us about the new Deputy Prime Minister as a kind of negative point, but this is something that’s long been missing from the Coalition:

Mr McCormack upheld the importance of unfair dismissal laws to “protect workers”, ­reflecting on his decision to take action against the Riverina Media Group over his departure from The Daily Advertiser in Wagga Wagga — a rural paper that he ­edited for a decade between 1992 and 2002 — ­declaring that he had been “wronged” by his former ­employers.

See the quotes around “protect workers”. There must be some notion that workers being wronged by their employer is so farfetched that it has no place within a government that is pro-market. So let me point out that being shafted by one’s employer is not exactly an unknown phenomenon and it’s a pleasure to see someone back inside the leadership of the Coalition who understands this. I worked for a quarter of a century as the Chief Economist for Australia’s national employer association in the middle of our industrial relations system – even presented the National Wage Case on three occasions – but it never crossed my mind that in arguing on behalf of business that I was acting on behalf of people who were always guaranteed to do what was ethically and morally right. You have no idea what rotten sods there are running businesses, although now that I think about it, I imagine most of you do.

Our unique system of industrial tribunals is in my view a large part of what has made Australia so economically and socially stable. The blind spot in John Howard’s period as PM was his war on our tribunals which in the end led to his introduction of WorkChoices as the core industrial relations legislation. Remember this?

In May 2005, Prime Minister John Howard informed the Australian House of Representatives that the federal government intended to reform Australian industrial relations laws by introducing a unified national system. WorkChoices was ostensibly designed to improve employment levels and national economic performance by dispensing with unfair dismissal laws for companies under a certain size, removing the “no disadvantage test” which had sought to ensure workers were not left disadvantaged by changes in legislation, thereby promoting individual efficiency and requiring workers to submit their certified agreements directly to Workplace Authority rather than going through the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. It also made adjustments to a workforce’s ability to legally go on strike, enabling workers to bargain for conditions without collectivised representation, and significantly restricting trade union activity. . . .

WorkChoices was a major issue in the 2007 federal election, with the Australian Labor Party (ALP) led by Kevin Rudd vowing to abolish it. Labor won government at the 2007 election and repealed the whole of the WorkChoices legislation by the Fair Work Act 2009.

That’s not to say there are no improvements to be made, but a return to WorkChoices is not one of them. Perhaps for a change someone has learned something from history. Good to see Michael McCormack take up his place and good luck to him.

How Turnbull made up with Trump

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For the morons who wrote this story to imply that it was PDT who changed his tune and not Malcolm shows what an out-of-touch bunch of clowns they are: How Trump made up with Australia’s prime minister after a ‘most unpleasant call’. This bit is OK, however:

When Turnbull visits the White House today, February 23, it will mark a stark turnabout from his contentious row with Trump last January 28. The Australian leader has now become one of the U.S. president’s closest partners, as they work on issues ranging from the North Korean nuclear threat to infrastructure plans in their respective countries.

This, from the opening paras, is also OK:

On his eighth day in office, President Donald Trump blasted and badgered Australia’s leader over an immigration dispute, telling Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, “this is the most unpleasant call,” and then abruptly hanging up on the head of one of America’s staunchest allies.

But what is not OK is to imply that it was PDT who had seen the error of his ways. Here’s the reality.

Turnbull has never had the slightest feel for politics, has no evident ability to assess things from a conservative perspective, assumed from the start that PDT would be a failure and expected those on the right side of the political divide in Australia to support his disdain for the President. Wrong on all counts. What his reation to the election and his initial conversation with the President did instead was reinforce the disdain from everyone Turnbull counted on for support, who never gets anything right. Other than being the nominal figurehead Prime Minister, he has only limited authority over those who the Liberal-National parties are counting on to vote for them. That his own party, plus a twelve-month series of Trump successes, has made him change his tune is proof only that he wishes to be Prime Minister some more.

It is also more evidence of what a success PDT has actually been.

The end of in the beginning

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I went out shopping for a book that would answer to the following description: Bible Stories for Children. I came across a couple but none that really did what I hoped, tell the stories from the Bible in a way that reflected their serious purpose and moral significance while also being told well enough so that the stories would be remembered. Where any child educated only within our school system would have the slightest chance of coming across the names Cain and Abel today, to choose only one example, is an unknown. Even the phrase, “In the Beginning…” would be unknown to almost any child brought up in the West today. Are the Ten Commandments taught anywhere at all outside of a religious school? It has become virtually impossible to teach almost anything about the moral and cultural roots of our civilisation.

On the other hand, getting a copy of Where Did I Come From? and other such explorations of the reproductive side of life are easy enough to find.

If you are interested in the decadence of the times in which we live, #MeToo Division, this might help to give you a clue.

ALP sent people to the US to work for the Democrats in 2016

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They think it’s a scandal because of foreign influence on the American election on the side of the Democrats, which in this case from Australia, while I think it’s a scandal that the Labor Party has lined up so closely with the Democrats in the US.

Breaking: Australian Labor Party Sent Operatives to Work Against Trump During 2016 Campaign …When Will They Be Indicted?

The story was well documented and raised a bit of a stink in Australia because the operatives were funded by Aussie taxpayers.

When will Dirty Cop Robert Mueller indict these foreign nationals?
This makes the Russian influence pale in significance.

In February 2016 Project Veritas released video of Australian Labor Party activists assisting Democrats in the US. The activists are seen assisting the Bernie Sanders campaign.
This is a clear violation of FEC laws.

Will Robert Mueller indict this foreign interference with US elections?

For myself, I don’t recall this being mentioned here, but it should be. Probably been quiet because Malcolm had sent his own people to work with the Democrats as well.

This is timely

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Barnaby Joyce has just resigned over accusations of sexual harassment and here is Jordan Peterson discussing, “What are the rules that govern sexual interaction between men and women in the workplace?”

Video via Instapundit.

This is Andrew Bolt’s post on Barnaby’s resignation:

Barnaby Joyce quits as Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister. He says the complaint against him of sexuak harassment – which he denies – was the last straw.

Malcom Turnbull had tried to publicly shame him into quitting but failed. His personal attak at a press conference eight days ago backfired, wth Nationals MPs declaring Joyce would stay.

But then came three devastatig leaks from the Government which destroyed Joyce and invite revenge.

Someone, almost certainly from Cabinet, leaked that Joyce had not declared during a Cabinet discussions to apparove an inland rail line that he owned land along the route.

Then someone, almost certainly within Cabinet, leaked that Joyce had been “ruthless” in Cabinet in demanding Minister Sussan Ley quit over her expenses controversy and thus was a hypocrite in not himself quitting now.

A familiar name features in that leak:

Sky News is reporting that cabinet ministers are angry about Mr Joyce’s behaviour in light of his handling of previous crises.

Witnesses have reportedly said that during cabinet discussions relating to the scandal over Ms Ley’s travel, Mr Joyce was “ruthless”, insisting that Ms Ley “had to go”.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop reportedly argued for a proper investigation to establish whether Ms Ley had done anything wrong, but Mr Joyce said, “No, let me tell you how this is going to end. She needs to stand down”.

He is said to have taken a similar approach with respect to allegations relating to a late-night incident in a Hong Kong bar involving a female departmental staffer, which were levelled at Mr Briggs.

And now someone, probably in the Nationals party or in the Government, leaked that a woman in Western Australia had accused Joyce of sexual harassment (which he strongly denies). The woman says she never wanted the accusation made public.

Politics is always tough. This assassination of Joyce has been particularly brutal.

I doubt he will forgive.