Carolina Woman Accused of Sex with Boy, 14

Nicole Prado Bates
(Rock Hill, South Carolina) A 22-year-old local woman, Nicole Prado Bates, has been accused of engaging in sex with a 14-year-old boy.

Bates faces counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor and criminal solicitation of a minor.

Ohio Teacher Indicted for Sex with Student - Update

Stacy L. McConoughey
(Marysville, Ohio) A 36-year-old local teacher, Stacy L. McConoughey, has been accused of four counts of sexual battery of an 18-year-old student.

The counts stem from four separate sexual events, two of which allegedly occurring on school grounds.

The 36-year-old was charged for having sex with the male student from October 2014 to May 2015.

The student was in McConoughey’s English class and worked as her teacher’s aide. He graduated in 2015.

McConoughey faces a possible 20 years in prison.

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Ohio Teacher Accused of Relationship with Student
[Previous 5/17/15 post]
(Marysville, Ohio)

An English teacher at Marysville High School has been accused of having an “inappropriate relationship” with an 18-year-old student.

Police escorted Stacy McConoughey, 36, from the school on Thursday and she has been relieved of duty, Superintendent Diane Mankins said.

The male student told a guidance counselor about the relationship on Thursday, Mankins said. McConoughey has taught in the Marysville district since 2001.

So far, no formal charges have been filed.

Scotland the brave

I have written a lot that is very critical of Scotland recently (e.g. here). The frantic hate of their supposed "oppressors" -- the English -- that is coming from some of the Scots nationalists is grotesque -- if only because Scots get more spent on them per capita by the British government than the English do.  But gratitude is a rare flower I guess.

I have in fact always been a Scots nationalist in my sympathies.  It is obvious to me that the Scots and the English are two very different people and having them yoked to the same cart is bound to produce tensions.  So let each go their own way. After having spent some time in both countries -- and marrying a Scottish wife -- some differences at least seem very clear to me.  The English on the whole are an emotionally restrained people, for instance, while the Scots are great sentimentalists.  An amusing proof of that is that on a traditionally emotional occasion -- parting -- the English have to sing a Scottish song, in an almost incomprehensible language to them: "Auld lang syne".

And the political differences between the Scots and the English are legendary.  The Scots in Scotland are frantic socialists.  When Margaret Thatcher first gained the Prime Ministership with a huge swing towards her in England, Scotland actually swung away from the Tories. So that alone is surely an argument for independence.  Why should either nation have the political preferences of the other imposed upon it?

So the best I can do to understand the hatreds flowing from some of the Scots Nats is that it is a welling up of many lifetimes of frustration at being locked into an unsuitable marriage.  It remains deplorable, however.  Hate is intrinsically destructive.

But there is no doubt that the Scots have been traditionally warlike.  I gather that about a third of the British army to this day is Scottish.  And a tradition of war should select for manly men -- strong, confident and robust men.  And Scotland does seem to produce a goodly number of such men.  Watch the video below to see what I mean.  Bill McCue is the sort of men that Scots think of as Scottish and there is some truth in that.  I hope the Scots speech is not too hard to understand.



How can a country be bad that produces big, confident and yet sentimental men like that?  What woman would not like to have a man in her life like that (pace the feminists)?  Scotland is a wonderful country with massive traditions of its own and it should be free to pursue its own destiny in its own way

I have written quite a bit about Scotland in the academic journals.  See here

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Ohio Teacher Sentenced for Sex with Male Student - Update

(Toledo, Ohio) Former teacher Jennifer Kuhlman has been sentenced to community control for five years.

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Ohio Teacher Guilty of Sex with Male Student - Update
[Previous 3/11/15 post]

(Toledo, Ohio) Former Bowsher High School math teacher Jennifer Kuhlman, 30, pleaded guilty to two counts of attempt to commit sexual battery.

Sentencing is scheduled for April 28.

* * * * *
Ohio Teacher Accused of Sex with Male Student
[Previous 11/7/14 post]
(Toledo, Ohio) A math teacher and cross country coach at Bowsher High School, Jennifer Kuhlman, has been accused of engaging in an inappropriate relationship with a student.

Kuhlman has been accused of sexual battery, violation of district policy for staff and student relations, and unprofessional conduct.

Kuhlman was suspended with pay on Tuesday after district officials received a report alleging she had been in an inappropriate relationship with a student, according to TPS.[Toledo Public Schools]

The student is now 18 and is a graduate of Bowsher, but the accusations stem from last year when the boy was still a student at the school, district Chief of Staff Brian Murphy said.

Police have been notified.

Race relations:  Are we more "enlightened" these days?

The Left are culturally triumphant in America today.  They worked tirelessly for their dominance and they have won it. Anger is a great motivator, it seems. Conservative values have few champions outside the more evangelical churches.  The media, bureaucracy, schools and colleges are a Leftist monoculture.  And the Left are convinced that their ideas have made America much more enlightened than it was.  If it weren't for those goddam conservatives, America would be a wonderland of right-thinking with no dissent allowed.

Is there any truth in that?  I can't see it.  With the vast anti-white hostility whipped up among blacks by the Left, it seems to me that race war is restrained only by the impossibility of it succeeding.

So how does that compare with the past?  In the Jim Crow era, blacks walked very gingerly through life.  Not only being aggressive but even being "uppity" could earn a black the rope on some occasions. So an enforced racial peace prevailed, with levels of black crime much lower than today -- particularly black-on-white crime.

But nobody these days would advocate a return to Jim Crow.  So is there a better model of modern-day multiculturalism than what prevails today?  Is there a better model in the past?  There is.  I was there.  I grew up in an exceptionally multicultural society that was also as peaceful as any.  It was an unwitting and unintended natural experiment that does, I think, tell us a lot.  It's something that took place in Australia but the similarities between Australia and the USA are great -- great enough to permit generally safe generalizations from one to the other.

I grew up in the '40s and '50s in Innisfail (which is actually a romantic term for Ireland -- and a lot of us did have some Irish blood.  I do).  And for reasons that need not detain us, the small population there (c. 7000) had quite amazing racial diversity.  About 50% of the population were Anglo-Celtic and another 30% were Italian but the rest almost covered the racial spectrum:  Indians, Chinese, Maltese, Spaniards, Greeks, Russians, Danes, Aborigines etc.  But there were no Muslims or Africans.

So what were race-relations like?  Generally civil.  We Anglos were shocked to see Italian men wearing pointy shoes but I doubt that anyone ever mentioned it to them.  And we got gelato long before anybody else in Australia did.  There was grumbling among the Anglos about "wops" and "dagoes" and in her youth my mother was threatened by her father that he would disown her if she married an Italian.

But within-group grumbles were just about it. There was no real aggression from either side. The Italians and Spanish grew rich farming sugarcane and the Greeks opened the only cafe in town (the "Bluebird").  And very popular it was.  And a Dane sold us milk straight from the cow (quite illegally).  It was not paradise. Drunken deeds happened there.  My own father was something of a king-hitter if someone disrespected him when he had been drinking.  But people mainly mixed socially in their own ethnic groups.  The men floored by my father were Anglo-Celtic men much like him.

So it was a normal Australian country town much like any other despite it phenomenal ethnic mix.  There was real behavioural tolerance there even if the language among friends left something to be desired.  A man who decried "dagoes" in private would be just as polite in any dealings he had with Italians as he would be with anyone else.  The speech did not matter.  The current Leftist hysteria about "incorrect" speech was unknown and unimagined.

So it is perfectly possible for a heavily multicultural society to be perfectly civil and free of inter-group aggression. No society will ever be perfectly peaceful or just but stress-free multiculturalism is possible.

So the Left have wrought a great evil by their constant preaching that black failure is due to white prejudice. Who can blame blacks for taking that as read and becoming angered by it? The whole Leftist  agenda of "affirmative action" screams that blacks are being unfairly treated and that government has to step in to right a wrong.  But affirmative action is just racism hiding behind an anodyne name and its fruit -- hate -- is the typical fruit of racism.

The only message coming from government about race should be that blacks are better than whites at some things and whites are better than blacks at some other things.  Any other message destroys social peace.

So from my perspective the present is not enlightened at all. It is endarkened, if I may coin a word.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). 

Derisive conference comments about global warming -- and the Pope

I like the quote from Inhofe at the end of the article below.  Inhofe said that the Pope should stick to his own specialties and leave the climate to people who know something about it.  Pope Frank would only be taking his own advice if he did that.  In his apostolic exhortation of late 2013, Frank said that the church needs to stop talking about homosexuality etc. and start talking about salvation.  I quote from Evangelii gaudium:

"34. If we attempt to put all things in a missionary key, this will also affect the way we communicate the message. In today’s world of instant communication and occasionally biased media coverage, the message we preach runs a greater risk of being distorted or reduced to some of its secondary aspects. In this way certain issues which are part of the Church’s moral teaching are taken out of the context which gives them their meaning. The biggest problem is when the message we preach then seems identified with those secondary aspects which, important as they are, do not in and of themselves convey the heart of Christ’s message. We need to be realistic and not assume that our audience understands the full background to what we are saying, or is capable of relating what we say to the very heart of the Gospel which gives it meaning, beauty and attractiveness.

35. Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed. When we adopt a pastoral goal and a missionary style which would actually reach everyone without exception or exclusion, the message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary. The message is simplified, while losing none of its depth and truth, and thus becomes all the more forceful and convincing."

I don't attempt to track all Roman documents but I try to wade through the major ones.  It can be amusing --JR.


Award winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer declared man-made global warming fears to be “a house of cards” and a “truly a mad issue.”

“This is truly a mad issue,” Happer told the crowd of several hundred at the global warming skeptic conference in Washington DC on Thursday night. The event was sponsored by the Heartland Institute. Happer has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific studies.

“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, nor will it cause catastrophic global warming,” Happer explained to the audience at the The Tenth International Conference on Climate Change (#ICCC10). “This whole climate scare is a house of cards,” Happer said.

“The social cost of carbon is probably negative. There is no social cost of carbon,” he added. Happer has previously testified to the U.S. Congress. See: Flashback 2009: Will Happer Tells Congress: Earth in ‘CO2 Famine’ — ‘The increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind’ — ‘Children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science’

Earlier in the day, Atmospheric Physicist Dr. Fred Singer told the summit that the effect of CO2 emissions on climate is “negligible, not important” but very beneficial for agriculture.

Also attending the summit was U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee chairman Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Inhofe advised Pope Francis to stay out of the climate debate.

“Everyone is going to ride the pope now. Isn’t that wonderful,” Inhofe told reporters. “The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours.”

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Bay State Woman Accused of Another Rape - Update



Heather Salines
(Saugus, Massachusetts) Heather Salines, 39, has now been accused of raping the brother of her first alleged victim.

Tip: JR

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Bay State Woman Accused of Rape
[Previous 6/8/14 post]
(Saugus, Massachusetts) A 38-year-old local woman, Heather Salines, has been accused of engaging in sex with a 15-year-old boy who is a friend of Salines daughter.

Salines faces multiple charges, including aggravated child rape.

Salines told authorities she had sex with the minor at a Double Tree Hotel in Danvers on March 19, 2014 and two days earlier in a vehicle parked in a Saugus park, according to a police report. She also told cops that “they sent pictures, naked, back and forth,” according to the report.

“[W]hen I looked at him, he did not act like a 15 year old … he acted like a grown man,” she told police.

Authorities initiated the investigation at the Belmonte Middle School in Saugus after a student had been called to the school office for showing nude photos on his phone.

Salines remains free on $7,500 bail.

Truth About Climate Change - British MP Exposes Government Sophistry





On the 10th of June 2015, UK Member of Parliament, David TC Davies MP rose to tell the Government The Truth about Climate Change, during the debate. The Government refused to deny his well founded assertions, even though he asked the Climate Minister to correct him if he was mistaken, and if she knew any different.

A red faced Labour Party MP was embarrassed to hear that his own fatuous assertions were actually contradicted by the UNIPCC itself, in documents read out by Mr. Davies.

"Top Cat" Davies is a smart lad.  He is English but when he won election to a Welsh constituency, he promptly learned fluent Welsh.  And Welsh is as foreign as German, perhaps more so

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

British Teacher Accused of Nasty with Students

Anne Lakey
(County Durham, England) A 55-year-old headteacher from Stanley, County Durham, Anne Lakey, has been accused of engaging in sex with students three decades ago.

The case ended up in court after the first alleged victim, now 41, came across Lakey’s picture while researching a school place for his child.

The jury heard a blog by the headteacher stated she wanted to ‘give young people the best start in life’.

It prompted the father to write in an email in December 2012: ‘I can’t believe this woman is still working with young people. She shouldn’t be allowed to go anywhere near young people, especially boys. She had sex with me when I was 13. She used to phone my school to pretend to be my mother.’

Whoa!

Tip: JR

Doctor Problem

It is unclear what exactly motivated this doctor to allegedly do stupid stuff.

The Virginia Board of Medicine has temporarily suspended the license of a doctor who provided emergency medical combat training for the military, alleging he dosed students with alcohol and ketamine, had them perform invasive procedures on one another, and exploited them for sexual gratification.

Dr. John H. Hagmann, 59, is scheduled to appear in Richmond next week for a disciplinary hearing before the board. His company, Deployment Medicine International, is based in Gig Harbor, Wash., but he maintains a training facility on a farm 40 miles north of Richmond in Partlow.

Frankly, Dr. Hagmann appears to be emulating the actions of Nazi doctors in WWII concentration camps.

Dakota Woman Accused of Leaving Kids to Die

Michelle Wounded Face
(Bismarck, North Dakota)

A South Dakota woman accused of leaving her two young daughters to die in an unheated car during a frigid winter day on a North Dakota American Indian reservation pleaded guilty to child abuse and neglect charges Tuesday, saying she was under the influence of drugs when she abandoned her children.

Michelle Wounded Face, 25, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota who has been living on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, could get up to 10 years in prison at her Sept. 2 sentencing hearing but also could be sentenced under federal guidelines to time served, about six months. The decision rests with U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland, who said he would like to see Wounded Face get help rather than a lengthy prison term. She currently is taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs.

Face awaits sentencing.

Pennsylvania Woman Gets Probation for Sex with Boy - Update

Iris Gibney
(Pottsown, Pennsylvania) Iris Gibney has been sentenced to 5 years of probation.

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Pennsylvania Woman Accused of Nasty with Boy
[Previous 12/24/14 post]
(Upper Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania) A 42-year-old local woman, Iris Gibney, has been accused of performing sex acts on a minor in the back of a car.

Gibney has been charged with several offenses related to inappropriate relations with a 17-year-old boy.

On Nov. 15, at around 8:30 p.m., Upper Pottsgrove police observed two vehicles parked in the lower rear parking lot of Hollenbach Park after the park was closed. When officers approached the vehicles, they noticed that the two people in the back seat of a black Mitsubishi were not wearing clothes and were engaging in sexual acts, police said.

As police approached, both the juvenile male and the woman, later identified as Gibney, stopped what they were doing and began putting their clothes back on. Police then asked the juvenile to exit the vehicle as Gibney proceeded to put on her clothes, according to court documents.

After asking the juvenile for identification, police asked him if the woman in the car was his girlfriend. The juvenile answered that Gibney was not his girlfriend and that he had met her at his high school football game. After being told why officers approached the car, the juvenile admitted to having sex with Gibney, police said.

Gibney was booked into custody with bail set at $50,000.

Connectedness and drugs

I have written on several occasions (here, here and here) about the importance of connectedness to human health and thriving.  We need other people both psychologically and practically.  Man is a social animal and all that.

It is stronger in some people than others -- with Anglo-Saxons probably the most independent -- if French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd is to be believed.   At the other end of the scale, an Australian Aborigine will do his best to kill himself of you put him into solitary confinement, his distress at being even temporarily disconnected from others of his kind is so great.  The macho cultures of the Mediterranean are somewhere in between.

And I have also previously argued that conservatives have a great advantage in developing feelings of connectedness with others --  while Leftist hatred of the world about them militates against such feelings in them.  No doubt they have some connectedness with friends and family but their anger and hostility must make it difficult for them in general.

"The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood"

The above quotation from George Orwell is a fairly classic Leftist comment. "All men are brothers" is a cry from Leftists that goes back at least to the 19th century.  And we must not forget that "fraternite" was one of the 3 aims of the French revolution.

And it all fits in very well with the emotional importance of "connectedness" in human beings. Because of their disgruntlement with the world about them, Leftists tend to feel disconnected from their own society but do nonetheless miss that sense of connectedness badly. So they make up a fantasy (and impossible) world in which they have a superabundant amount of connectedness: A world in which all men are brothers.

It is therefore interesting that Johann Hari has  argued that lack of connectedness lies behind drug addiction.

Hari's dishonesty is well-known so I would normally ignore him but, once you get past the smarminess, the facts he recounts are correct and moderately well-known among psychologists.  And his summary of the findings concerned as hinging on connectedness covers the facts well.  And I of course agree with him that feelings of connectedness are hugely important to mental wellbeing and, indeed, mental health.

So is drug addiction more common among Leftists?  I have a subjective impression that it is but only a carefully sampled study would give a real answer.  I cannot in fact imagine a conservative doing drugs but maybe that just shows how little I know.

A major caveat is that the examples Hari relies on concern heroin and that heroin is a social addiction rather than a physical one has long been known.  What is true for heroin may not be true of other drugs -- methamphetamine, for instance.  There is also a view that there is to some extent an addictive personality, probably mediated neurologically.  So different personalities might give different results.

So there is room for a study there.  What are the politics of drug users?  Do heroin users and (say) marijuana users have similar politics?  And how does race and income affect it?  If most users are black and poor, that alone would produce a correlation with Leftist politics.  But a careful study using (say) partial correlation, should be able to disentangle all that.  The very first computer program I ever wrote was to do partial correlation but I don't have the energy to do original survey research any more

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Ohio Woman Accused of Sex with Teen

Melissa Harris
(Cincinnati, Ohio) A 37-year-old Anderson Township mother, Melissa Harris, has been accused of engaging in sex with a middle school student.

Harris was booked on counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.

Spinning like a top over statins

The amazing statin religion sails on.  A recent study found that there are indeed severe loss of memory problems for people who take statins to prevent heart attacks.  So how was the study reported in the popular press?  The headline was "Cholesterol-lowing statins DON'T cause memory loss".  WTF is going on?  Don't blame the journalists.  As usual, it was the doctors who did the study who were spinning like tops.

The academic journal article is Statin Therapy and Risk of Acute Memory Impairment.  The study was a generally good one that used two controls, people not taking drugs, people taking statins and people taking another class of lipid lowering drugs.  High levels of lipids (blood fats) are thought to be behind heart attacks.  So what did they find?  I quote:

"Both statin and nonstatin LLDs were strongly associated with acute memory loss in the first 30 days following exposure in users compared with nonusers but not when compared with each other"

So in normal circumstances we might conclude that the problem is bigger than thought.  Not only statins but another class of lipid lowering drug is a big problem. We might conclude that we need our lipids. Our bodies put them into our blood for a reason and anything that reduces them is bad for our brains.

But the researchers were not happy with that straightforward conclusion.  They theorized that their study was faulty and the patients detected what was going on and gave the result expected!  They were willing to disrespect their own research in order to hang on to their theory that statins are harmless. No wonder I and some others refer to statin use as a religion!  These guys are definite true believers.  But look at the facts, not at the theory.  Statins ARE bad for you!  They mess up your brain.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

British Educator Accused of Sex with Boy

Louise Aspinall
(Manchester, England) A 35-year-old teaching assistant at Swinton High School, Louise Aspinall, has been accused of sexual activity with a child under the age of 16.

The offences, which she has denied, are said to have taken place between February and March 2013.

During a video recording of the boy’s first interview with police, played to the jury, he said the first incident took place when the pair were left alone in a house together and started ‘messing around’.

Aspinall denies everything as the trial continues.

Tip: JR

Female Military Veteran Suicides

From Tribune News Service:

New government research shows that female military veterans commit suicide at nearly six times the rate of other women, a startling finding that experts say poses disturbing questions about the backgrounds and experiences of women who serve in the armed forces.

Their suicide rate is so high that it approaches that of male veterans, a finding that surprised researchers because men generally are far more likely than women to commit suicide.

The data came from 23 states between 2000 and 2010.

Turkish President Erdoğan Loses Ruling Majority

Turkish President Erdoğan
(Ankara, Turkey)

The political party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost its ruling majority in parliament, apparently setting back the anti-Israel leader’s bid to gain sweeping powers.

With most of the votes counted in Sunday’s election, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, had about 41 percent of the vote with projections of about 256 seats, some 20 less than needed for single-party rule.

Reportedly, Erdogan wanted sweeping powers but was stymied by the election results.

A new denial that Hitler was a socialist

Tim Stanley is an historian so his denial that Hitler was a socialist is not the sheer ignorance that one usually encounters.  The clue to his skepticism lies however early in his article.  He says of Hitler:  "He may well have been anticapitalist, but that does not necessarily mean that his concept of socialism sits within the Marxist tradition".

That sentence is very curious indeed.  How could Hitler be anticapitalist and NOT be socialist? "Anticapitalist" and "socialist" are pretty near synonyms.  (Yes. I know about Bismarck.  That's another story and a fascinating one but I have written on that elsewhere -- e.g. here).  But by the time we get to the end of the sentence we see what is going on.  Stanley's Leftist background is showing.  Like many academic Leftists, socialism is to Stanley synonymous with Marxism.

So Leftist leaders like Tony Blair are not socialists?  Blair is certainly no Marxist but he was one of the most electorally successful leaders the British Labour party has had. So Stanley is saying only that Hitler is not a Marxist.  But who would disagree with that?  Hitler hated Bolshevism.

But some of the great hates in life stem from sibling rivalry and anybody who has spent much time talking to Leftists will know how much sibling rivalry there is among them. It is very common on the Left -- witness the icepick in the head that Trotsky got courtesy of Stalin. Very few of the old Bolsheviks lived for long after the revolution, in fact.

And Lenin was just as bad as Stalin. In a 1920 pamphlet you find a contempt for some of his fellow Leftists that is probably greater than anything he ever wrote about the Tsar. It is in describing his fellow revolutionaries (Kautsky and others) that Lenin spoke swingeingly of "the full depth of their stupidity, pedantry, baseness and betrayal of working-class interests". But Leftism is founded on hate so such hate for fellow Leftists is no surprise.

So Stanley starts out on a very false footing.

Stanley's other objections to the view of Hitler as a socialist boil down to saying that Hitler was hypocritical.  He said one thing to intimates and different things in public.  But surely that just makes him a politician?  He was one.  He fought many elections.  To judge any political figure by what they do in private is rather hilarious in fact.  Fidel Castro surely has earned his stripes as a socialist but he lives the privileged and luxurious of the Hispanic grandee that he is. Tito was similar.  Remember him?

I myself make no judgment about what Hitler really believed.  As  far as one can tell, it was a bit of a hodge-podge, though his antisemitism was probably heartfelt.  Even his antisemitism was Leftist in his days, however.  The founder of Germany's mainstream Leftist party, August Bebel, famously noted that "Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus des blöden Mannes" -- generally translated as "Antisemitism is the socialism of fools".  Antisemitism was in other words very common among pre-war socialists.  And Lenin himself alluded to the same phenomenon in saying that "it is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people" but "the capitalists of all countries."  He wanted class-war and saw antisemitism among his fellow Leftists as a distraction from that.

So what is of interest is surely not what Hitler believed in his heart of hearts but rather what he preached to the German public.  What was his appeal?  How did he campaign?  What did he promise in his rise to power?

And there is no doubt about that. Perhaps the most amazing parallel between Hitler and the postwar Left is that for much of the 30s Hitler was actually something of a peacenik. I am putting up below a picture of a Nazi propaganda poster of the 1930s that you won't believe unless you are aware of how readily all Leftists preach one thing and do another. It reads "Mit Hitler gegen den Ruestungswahnsinn der Welt".



And what does that mean? It means "With Hitler against the armaments madness of the world". "Ruestung" could more precisely be translated as "military preparations" but "armaments" is a bit more idiomatic in English.

And how about the poster below? It would be from the March 5, 1933 election when Hitler had become Chancellor but Marshall Hindenburg was still President:



Translated, the poster reads: "The Marshall and the corporal fight alongside us for peace and equal rights"

Can you get a more Leftist slogan than that? "Peace and equal rights"? Modern-day Leftists sometimes try to dismiss Hitler's socialism as something from his early days that he later outgrew. But when this poster was promulgated he was already Reichskanzler (Prime Minister) so it was far from early days.

We can all have our own views about what Hitler actually believed but he campaigned and gained power as a democratic Leftist. The March 5, 1933 election was the last really democratic election prewar Germany had and, in it, Hitler's appeal was Leftist.

There are more such election posters here

Stanley also makes the undoubtedly correct point that Hitler was a nationalist.  Since "Nazi" is a German abbreviation of "National Socialist" that is no news.  But can you be both a nationalist and a socialist?  Hitler showed that you can be.  But he was not original in that.  Napoleon was too.  And who was it who said, "Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country"?  It was Pericles actually, but Democrat hero JFK recycled it -- JR

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Border Patrol Helicopter Hit by Gunfire

Border Patrol Helicopter
(Near Laredo, Texas)

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing near the Mexican border after it was hit several times by gunfire, the FBI said on Saturday.

The helicopter was on an operational mission along the Rio Grande near Laredo, Texas, when shots from the ground struck it late Friday afternoon, Special Agent Michelle Lee said.

"The rounds penetrated and damaged the aircraft, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing," Lee told Reuters. The pilot was not injured and no one on the ground was affected by the emergency landing, she said.

It is unknown whether the gunfire came from the U.S. or the Mexican side of the border.