Saturday, May 30, 2009

SATURDAY NIGHT OLIVES AND PEACHES.

No. 1 is Olive with "You're not alone", 1996. Olive was a UK dance group from the mid-nineties, formed by songwriter/instrumentalist Tim Kellett (ex Simply Red), keyboardist Robin Taylor-Firth and singer Ruth-Ann Boyle. They had but two albums, Extra Virgin (1996) and Trickle (2000). You're not alone is from the first one, and, as far as I'm concerned, their only hit. I remember well that when it was released in summer 96, over here it was heralded by some deejay on a popular radio station (might have been Studio Brussel, but not sure), as "the music of the future". You might call that the Mother of all Overstatements, but thirteen years on I think it's still sounds pretty cool.





Cool were also The Presidents of the United States, an alterative rock/postgrunge band formed by Chris Ballew and Dave Dederer in 1993. Over here they had a couple of solid hits. Peaches is one of them, from the 1995 titleless album. It's - cough -not a very brainy song, but it is entertaining.






MFBB.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

LAFFER CURVE 101 - DEMOCRATS 0.

From the Washington Post, May 27, 2009:


Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look
Levy Viewed as Way to Reduce Deficits, Fund Health Reform

By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 27, 2009



With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax -- called a value-added tax, or VAT -- has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.

At a White House conference earlier this year on the government's budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama's policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

"There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform," Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. "I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table."

A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American -- a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families....


First off, as a European I'd like to point out that I was actually very much surprised the US did not have a VAT. Knowing that now, I am more than ever convinced the country does not need one. I have no intention to sound like a smartass, so I'll keep it simple. If what is as yet still the strongest and most successful economy on earth managed to keep functioning quite well, at least until recently, and become the, well, strongest and most successful economy on earth, and if it has been able to offer the overwhelming majority of its 300 million citizens a good and safe life, especially those willing to help themselves, then the United States should not introduce a VAT.

Over here we call it "direct taxes". Belgium has basically two tariffs, 21% and 6%. 21% is the most common one, 6% rather the exception. You buy books, certain medication, art objects, certain agricultural products, you pay an extra 6% over the basic value. Everything else, DOINK, 21% extra. So you want to buy a middle class car worth, say, 20,000 EUR, then you have to pay an extra 4,200EUR to the State. Of course you do not pay it directly to the state, the guy who sells you the car does.

Same goes for that new house you build. Normal value 250,000 EUR, you gotta cough up an extra 52,500 EUR to the State so that imams can be paid as well as a legion of fonctionnaires.

But whether you call it a direct tax or not, it is what it is: a TAX. It amounts to a tax hike. In my case, as a Beljun, a serious one. Of course, over here us net contributors have all developed somewhat like those weird and scary creatures you reportedly find on the bottom of the Mariana Trench, who survive despite having 11 kloms of water over them. They have adapted. So, it's not that we don't feel it anymore, but we live with it.

The thing is, if a mighty state like the US has until now apparently not had problems to build e.g. its gigantic road infrastructure, the mightiest army on the planet, and gazillions of skyscrapers, while all the while offering its citizens sound health care and a very high living standard.... then the US's government should not look for more income, at least not by using taxes. Because IN DOING SO, it may experience something called the Laffer Effect, which, believe it or not, might actually also be called the Ibn Khaldun Effect, after the muslim scientist who observed it first in the late thirteen hundreds (when there's something good to tell about the wifebeaters and headchoppers we say it also, unfortunately we have to hark back a couple of centuries):





At this point, I maybe ought to conclude by saying that someone should tell that guy who somehow made it POTUS - except I'm not holding out high hopes he'd understand it.


MFBB.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

MARK STEYN ON HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY.

Mark Steyn is his usual godlike self. From Commentarymagazine.com, May 2009:


"For a glimpse of the future, consider the (for the moment) bizarre circumstances of the recent Davis Cup First Round matches in Sweden. They had been scheduled long ago to be played in the Baltiska Hallen stadium in Malmo. Who knew which team the Swedes would draw? Could have been Chile, could have been Serbia. Alas, it was Israel.

Malmo is Sweden’s most Muslim city, and citing security concerns, the local council ordered the three days of tennis to be played behind closed doors. Imagine being Amir Hadad and Andy Ram, the Israeli doubles players, or Simon Aspelin and Robert Lindstedt, the Swedes. This was supposed to be their big day. But the vast stadium is empty, except for a few sports reporters and team officials. And just outside the perimeter up to 10,000 demonstrators are chanting, “Stop the match!” and maybe, a little deeper into the throng, they’re shouting, “We want to kill all Jews worldwide” (as demonstrators in Copenhagen, just across the water, declared just a few weeks earlier). Did Aspelin and Lindstedt wonder why they couldn’t have drawn some less controversial team, like Zimbabwe or Sudan? By all accounts, it was a fine match, thrilling and graceful, with good sportsmanship on both sides. Surely, such splendid tennis could have won over the mob, and newspapers would have reported that by the end of the match the Israeli players had the crowd with them all the way. But they shook ’em off at Helsingborg.

.....

When Western governments are as reluctant as King Abdullah to fly the Star of David, those among the citizenry who choose to do so have a hard time. In Britain in January, while “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators were permitted to dress up as hook-nosed Jews drinking the blood of Arab babies, the police ordered counter-protesters to put away their Israeli flags. In Alberta, in the heart of Calgary’s Jewish neighborhood, the flag of Hizballah (supposedly a proscribed terrorist organization) was proudly waved by demonstrators, but one solitary Israeli flag was deemed a threat to the Queen’s peace and officers told the brave fellow holding it to put it away or be arrested for “inciting public disorder.” In Germany, a student in Duisburg put the Star of David in the window of an upstairs apartment on the day of a march by the Islamist group Milli Görüs, only to have the cops smash his door down and remove the flag. He’s now trying to get the police to pay for a new door. Ah, those Jews. It’s always about money, isn’t it?

Peter, the student in Duisberg, says he likes to display the Israeli flag because anti-Semitism in Europe is worse than at any other time since the Second World War. Which is true. But, if you look at it from the authorities’ point of view, it’s not about Jew-hatred; it’s a simple numbers game. If a statistically insignificant Jewish population gets upset, big deal. If the far larger Muslim population—and, in some French cities, the youth population (i.e., the demographic that riots) is already pushing 50 percent—you have a serious public-order threat on your hands. We’re beyond the anti-Semitic and into the ad hoc utilitarian: The King Abdullah approach will seem like the sensible way to avoid trouble. To modify the UN joke: Whom won’t we play? Israel, of course. Not in public.

One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, a group wearing “BOYCOTT ISRAEL” T-shirts entered a French branch of Carrefour, the world’s largest supermarket chain, and announced themselves. They then systematically advanced down every aisle examining every product, seizing all the items made in Israel and piling them into carts to take away and destroy. Judging from the video they made, the protesters were mostly Muslim immigrants and a few French leftists. But more relevant was the passivity of everyone else in the store, both staff and shoppers, all of whom stood idly by as private property was ransacked and smashed, and many of whom when invited to comment expressed support for the destruction. “South Africa started to shake once all countries started to boycott their products,” one elderly lady customer said. “So what you’re doing, I find it good.”

....


The joke about Mandatory Palestine was that it was the twice-promised land. But isn’t that Europe, too? And perhaps Russia and maybe Canada, a little ways down the line? Two cultures jostling within the same piece of real estate. Not long ago, I found myself watching the video of another “pro-Palestinian” protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, “Run, run, you cowards!” and “Allahu akbar!” You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would understand: In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews."



There is a small country in Europe where one party is extremely clear about the need to defend Europes Jews. That country is Belgium; and that party is MY party, the VLAAMS BELANG. Belgium has 20,000 Jews, and their numbers are dwindling. By contrast, it also has 500,000 if not more muslims, and their numbers are soaring. The VB defends the former, the SP.a and the PS (Socialistische Partij/Part Socialiste) have allied themselves with the latter.


WHO ARE THE OPPORTUNISTS?


WHO ARE THE FASCISTS?


Not us.






PRIDE.



Any Fleming out there with half a conscience, rendezvous on June 7th. Let's bludgeon the bastards.



MFBB.

Monday, May 25, 2009

TO BNP OR NOT TO BNP.

Reader angleofrepose objected to my linking to the BNP, the British National Party, on the grounds that it is xenophobic, racist and counts Holocaust deniers among its members. I want to hasten that I certainly respect angleofrepose's point of view, and that I would never consider, just because I disagree with her, to remove it from the comments section.

It is indeed so that I recently put up the BNP logo with a link to the party's website. People who follow the comments know that I asked Scott, who is one of the original founders of DowneastBlog, whether he had any objections to that. Not receiving any, I put up logo and link. Since I am not - as angleofrepose seems to assume - the owner of this blog, but merely a guestwriter, I will remove both when asked by Scott or the other two original founders, Tom and Kerry D.

I admit I did not delve very deep into the BNP's history. I assume the party's origins are very much like the VB's: murky. To explain why I nevertheless deemed the BNP worthy enough to link to, allow me to shed some light on the "purification" process the VB went through.

I have often referred to the VB's dirty past and explained several times that I would never have joined in the streetfighting years, i.e. when it counted holocaust deniers and/or Hitler admirers among its members. The thing is, anno 2009 the VB is clean. I would even dare to say as clean as can be. And here's the curious thing. In any normal society, the Vlaams Belang having gone to GREAT lengths to become respectable, it would after some time have gained the credit it deserved for that. The racism has gone, the xenophobia has vanished, the sharp edges of the notorious 70-points plan have been sworn off, skinheads have been chased out, and the ranks have been filled with erudite, qualified and decent citizens.

The one thing that hasn't changed however...

... is the VB's treatment.

The party is STILL treated as a political pariah. ALL other parties still vow they will maintain the notorious cordon sanitaire. And in a perverse twist of irony, PRECISELY the man who transformed my party from a dubious nationalist club into a modern pro free market, ethically conservative party, Frank Vanhecke, is currently the subject of Belgium's "anti-racism" laws, and even risks losing his capacity as MEP, this for a minor slur in a local VB pamphlet which he didn't write, for which he nevertheless apologized, and for which he can't be prosecuted anyway since Belgian law stipulates that a responsible editor cannot be prosecuted if the author of the literature in question is known - which is the case. The mastermind behind the vicious attacks against Mr. Vanhecke is the socialist mayor of Sint-Niklaas, Freddy Willockx, who in 2003, in the runup to the liberation of Iraq, expressly forbade US military convoys the use of Belgian Army barracks in Sint-Niklaas.

As a final sidenote, it is true that the VB counts very few members of other races, but that has more to do with incessant vilification and even intimidation, since those few brave souls who did join immediately had firsthand experience of what a cordon sanitaire in microcosm means (a girl of Sri Lankan origin who had the guts to join the VB chapter in Lokeren was a castout herself in a matter of hours).

All of this leads us to the inescapable conclusion that the VB is not hated for what it does, but for what it is. The VB's treatment at the hands of Belgium's leftist or center-left mainstream parties is so to say a metaphor for the esteem in which the muslim world holds the entire west: the ummah loathes us, westerners, not for what we do, but for what we are. As if to underscore the value of this metaphor, the likeness makes all the more sense since muslims and leftists have shown themselves to be virtual allies anyway! Muslims hate the west because we denounce Allah's laws, and instead lead our lives by observing human-made laws. In the same manner, socialists hate the VB because it refuses to accept the dogmas of the Leftist Church.

To cut a long story short: the - admitted, skimpy - investigation I conducted prior to putting up the BNP logo and link convinced me nevertheless that the BNP is right now going through the same sanitization process the VB has gone through. This process is in all likelihood not as far advanced as in my party's case. However, I decided, especially in light of the dire situation in the UK, that the party deserved credit for what it has achieved so far. To be sure, the BNP's record is far from ideal. They expressly claim to be the defenders of Britain's "native" populations. But, if one denounces the BNP for that, one has also to denounce 85% of African Americans, since in 2008 they did exactly what one accuses the BNP of: cast their vote along racial lines. (note that, contrary to popular belief, the BNP does allow people of other races to join). On the economical front the BNP espouses viewpoints that even with a massive amount of goodwill cannot be described as other than "center left". They are for protectionism and supporting ailing industries. One of their even more ridiculous moves is their opposition to the proverbial "Polish plumber", allegedly taking British jobs. This is nothing short of sheer nonsense - the BNP is in dire need of a William Buckley. However, my attitude is, again in light of the catastrophic erosion of western values in the country which produced the Magna Carta, so be it. Donald Rumsfeld once said that you go to war with the army you have, not with the army you want. In the same manner, one goes to the ballot box with the party one has, not the party one wants. An estimated 7,000 sharia courts are operational in the UK, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has basically endorsed their existence. It does not matter, as regular reader and commenter Mark asks, whether to this date whites are subject to the rulings of these courts. All that matters is British Law. So if British Law stipulates that a divorce has to happen so and so, and that British males can have but one married wife, so it will be. And not according to the laws of a perverted, degenerated and utterly inferior desert "culture".

The islamization of Britain is achieving an utterly frightening dynamic, and if nothing happens soon, the slippery ride towards destruction of the fabric of British Society, as it was molded for a price paid for with the blood of literally millions, will become irreversible. One sole muslim member of the House of Lords was able to coerce British Parliament into submission. Imagine what it will be when there are twenty "Lord" Ahmeds. Labour, like every leftist party, has already shown it is the ally of islam. The Conservative Party, led by the idiot David Cameron, puts Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to shame.


There is but one alternative to STOP the gruesome process of islamization.

The BNP. The British National Party.

It is not ideal. It is possibly far from ideal.

But only the BNP is best placed to... in the words of the great Winston Churchill... guard the ... "simple uncounted rights" for which better men than we are died on the scaffold or the battlefield.






MFBB.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

MEMORIAL DAY 2009.




The Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial in Neuville-en-Condroz, Wallonia, southern Belgium. 5,329 members of the United States military who fell in World War II are buried here. Among them is Technical Sergeant Charles F. Carey.



Privates Thomas Tucker from Oregon and Kristian Menchaca from Texas. Brutally and gruesomly murdered and their bodies desecrated in 2006 by AQ operatives in Iraq.



Pray for all of them and their families.



MFBB.