McCain: I don’t like him, I hate McCain-Feingold, no.
Romney: Who?
Giuliani: I like him, clearly a good executive, the only thing he can do about abortion and gun control as president is appoint good judges, yes.
Archive for category Politics
Kerry Snubs Troops
Jan 6
In the lastest example of a Seinfeld scandal (the length of a Seinfeld scandal is directly proportional to the strength of its vacuum, which is why 3 years later the saga of the plastic turkey continues) it’s official – John Kerry wasn’t snubbed by soldiers in Iraq, he snubbed them. For a pair of reporters.
Let’s give three cheers (or if Brother Byrd is reading, two Hallelujahs and an Amen) for the political acumen ofJohn ‘Malpractice’ Kerry. Maybe somebody should give his staff T-shirts that read “Kerry went all the way to Iraq for a photo op with the troops and all he did was talk to a lousy pair of reporters”.
You’ve got to know you’re base. If you’re John Kerry, who’s more important, a whole bunch of ignoramuses who blew their schooling and wound up in Iraq, or a couple of reporters for the New York Times? Kind of a no-brainer, isn’t it?
Bryan Preston actually apologizes for calling Kerry “lonely” – which rates two Hallelujahs! and and an Amen! for Brother Preston from this corner at any rate. Although I will note that since loneliness is an emotional state it can’t be determined from a photograph – you can be lonely sitting at a table full of people (remember the start of Freshman year anyone?) and whatever the opposite of lonely is sitting all by yourself.
Flap apologizes an a more Kerryesque style.
Just to get out ahead on big John, here’s the next Kerry scandal of Sienfelding proportions.
I’m Bob Dole
Jan 4
I’m a 35, which puts me right under the picture of Bob Dole at this quiz. Funny, I picked that we shut cut farm subsidies, something I don’t think Bob “Kansas” Dole ever advocated. Maybe we both have good senses of humor. I’m not a fan of the single axis political interpretation, and a bunch of the questions were pretty much toss ups for me (e.g. which do you distrust more, IRS or FBI). While fun, I don’t think that reducing my politics to a number is useful, unlike my credit score. If it were, I suppose I could just put up a daily post consisting entirely of “35”.
via Ed Driscoll
Netanyahu On Bill Maher
Dec 9
I’m not a big fan of either Bill Maher or Benjamin Netanyahu, but I thought this was a very good interview by Mr. Netanyahu. I would like to thank Mr. Maher for bringing up a couple classic leftist tropes for the once and possible future Prime Minister to respond to. I also liked Mr. Maher’s line: “The world just doesn’t like it when Jews win.” Sadly, a large part of the world (including Mr. Maher) doesn’t like it when Westerners win either.
Hat tip to An Unsealed Room.
The View From The Other Side
Nov 16
Here’s one foreigner not whooping it up over the Democrats victory:
Smart Irish policymakers – several key civil servants, a few farsighted elected pols like Mary Harney, Charlie McCreevy, Bertie and Brian Cowen, and an unofficial cadre of advisers from the private sector acting for the good of the country – realised in the late 90s that for a small open island economy to prosper it would need something more than cheap wages, Guinness and the craic.So they focused on persuading big technology and pharmaceutical companies to move their intellectual property here. In 1998, the Irish corporate tax rate was slashed from 32% to 12.5%, still among the five lowest in the world. The US federal corporate tax rate is 35%.
In 2004, Ireland simply eliminated the 9% tax on the sale or transfer of intellectual property and launched an R&D tax credit. Microsoft was among the first takers. In 2005 the Wall Street Journal revealed that a little company called Round Island One had become Ireland’s biggest taxpayer. Round Island One is a brass-plate office set up in 2001 – a subsidiary of Microsoft. It booked profits of more than $9Billion in 2004. It paid $300million in taxes to the Irish exchequer.
What happens when Charlie Rangle and company have their way and make sure “American” firms pay taxes to America? Maybe not so good for my ancestral sod.
Hat tip to Eamonn Fitzgerald
Peggy Noonan writes very movingly in today’s Opinion Journal on Concession Stands. She addresses the need for national unity in winning the war against those who are committed to our destruction (emphasis added):
We are in a 30-year war. It is no good for it to be led by, identified with, one party. It is no good for half the nation to feel estranged from its government’s decisions. It’s no good for us to be broken up more than a nation normally would be. And straight down the middle is a bad break, the kind that snaps.
[…]
This is the age we live in: One day in the future either New York or Washington or both will be hit again, hard. It will be more deadly than 9/11. And on that day, those who experience it, who see the flash or hear the alarms, will try to help each other.
[…]
There are rogue states and rogue actors, there are forces and nations aligned against us, and they have nukes and other weapons of mass destruction, and some of them are mad. Know this. Walk to work each day knowing it, not in a pointlessly fearful way but in a spirit of “What can I do to make it better?”What can you do in two years? The common wisdom says not much. But here’s a governing attitude: First things first.
Do all you can to keep America as safe as possible as long as possible. Make sure she’s able to take a bad blow, a bad series of them. Much flows from this first thing, many subsets. Here is only one: Strengthen and modernize our electrical grid. When the bad thing comes we will need to be able to make contact with each other to survive together. Congress has ignored this for years.
Make America in the world as safe as possible by tending to and building our friendships in the world, by causing no unnecessary friction, by adding whatever possible and necessary emollients. In your approach to foreign affairs, rewrite Teddy Roosevelt: Speak softly, walk softly, and carry a big stick.
[..]
Those to me are the two big things. Much follows them, and flows from them. But to make some progress on these two things in the next two years would be breathtaking.
Will there be less corruption or more corruption now that the Democrats have taken Congress? While you might find it hard to image that it would be more, Don Surber looks at the incoming congress and concludes that based just on those we know already are crooks, it will be more. I suppose I can’t complain since I knowingly voted for a convicted felon in the past.
Election Day Plus 1
Nov 8
This was an election where neither party deserved a win (IMHO, at least) but the electorate decided in the aggregate to throw the bums out and give the other bums a chance. The Republicans ran the way they governed — not well. I can’t recall any mention about the economy and how it’s booming. The Democrats weren’t much better, but they were better enough to win back the House and maybe even the Senate. It’s my hope this doesn’t spark a Republican search for purity but learning, as in learning from their mistakes.
I went to bed with Jim Talent winning and Amendment 2 losing, and awoke to find Talent lost and Amendment 2 won. While Amendment 2 won’t actually change anything, Talent’s loss will.
The minimum wage increase passed handily. We can all feel good about ourselves now. Too bad for the people priced out of the job market by this (maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.) Yeah, I know the supporters got people with big pointy heads to say this wouldn’t affect employment, but can you name any commodity that when you raise the price on it people buy more of it?
What I don’t understand is how slow the election returns came in for Missouri. This year voting was either touch screen or opti-scan, both of which log the votes immediately. We should have results seconds after the polls close. Instead, as I write this, there are 68 precincts still not reporting. Did the horse and buggy breakdown?
I feel virtuous today – I voted against a tax on other people (Amendment 3) and voted for 2 taxes on myself – one for the Parkway school district, and one for the Special school district. I would have voted for the tobacco tax (Amendment 3) if the backers had just been honest. I might not be alone in that (hint, hint).
Poll workers must have gotten a commision on touch screen voters because they were really pushing it hard. Glenn Reynolds would be so proud of me — I voted using the new pen and paper method – the same one I took standardized tests in school with 30 years ago. I did so only because the line was so much shorter for the optiscan than the touch screen.
No word on whether Red Villa voted in this election.
I expect “Mission Accomplished” banners to be hung up in newsrooms across the country. No word if the newsrooms can put 2 and 2 together.
In similar news, Nicaraguans have returned Daniel Ortega to power. The tagline of this blog, The Triumph of Hope Over Experience was certainly in evidence yesterday.
Cable news over the weekend focused on Missouri. Apparently, we’re the United States in miniature here. One of the fun things about the Missouri constitution is that it can be amended by simple majority vote, so every year that goes by it less and less resembles a constitution – a statement of how government works — and more and more it’s just another part of the state legal code.
So here are the complete set of amendments and propositions for the entire state.
Amendment 2:
This is an excercise in public relations. It’s being sold as a measure that would (1) ensure access to stem stell cures, and (2) outlaw cloning. What it really does is (and why Jack Danforth is so involved) ensure researchers at Washington University will be able to engage in embryonic stem cell research without any restrictions by the state of Missouri.
Any cures will be years down the road. Adult stem cells, which noboby has an objection to, already have cures. Now much is made of the potential of embryonic stem cells, but I’m old enough to remember how interferon was going to be a cure all, and even more recently how cancer was licked. So the idea that Missouri needs access to such cures right now is pure bushwa.
And that brings us to part 2, which is the so called ban on cloning. What supporters don’t tell you is that reproductive cloning is baned, but somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning is constitutionally protected by the amendment. That runs counter to my desires – as I have said before, I’m fine with reproductive cloning, but I’m against creating embryos just so they can be destroyed. I don’t appreciate the way the ads in support just come out and lie about this, and it’s not like this is some oversight, but this is the real agenda of the amendment and the full text is quite careful to make sure that SCNT cloning is not outlawed – just reproductive cloning.
While I don’t think this amendment will make much difference one way or another, I’m voting against it because (1) it is deliberately misleading, and (2) it doesn’t belong in the constitution.
Amendment 3:
This is a tax on tobacco. I don’t have a problem with raising taxes on tobacco, but why does it have to be a constitutional amendment, and why are we setting up the Healthy Future Fund? I’m voting against because it’s legislation, and therefore doesn’t belong in the constitution. Put it to me as a proposition, make it a straight tax to raise revenue, and you’ve got my vote. I’m getting tired of all the deception.
Amendment 6:
This amendment will create a tax exemption for real and personal property that is used or held for nonprofit purposes or activities of veterans’ organizations. I’m going to vote yes on this one.
Amendment 7:
This amendment is supposed to stop state pensions for statewide officeholding felons and change the rules about legislator compensation. OK, I’m voting for this one too. I’m all for not paying felons, and let’s face it, the legislature is going to figure out a way to get more money one way or another, so I might as well just get it over with now.
Proposition B:
I’m against the whole minimum wage mentality that somehow it represents anything other than the rate of completely unskilled labor and should be set by anything other than market forces. I realize this is a popular measure, but I’d rather see improvements to Earned Income Credits and other forms of poverty relief that provide good incentives than intervention into the labor market, especially one like this that happens every year. In other words, I’m voting no.
I’m willing to accept that John Kerry was not trying to criticism American soldiers as stupid but mistakenly called them unmotivated, lazy, and ignorant. So I agree with Ms. Barber that Mr. Kerry is being unfairly attacked on this subject:
“I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.”
That’s a clear reference to Bush, who Kerry implies is dumb. But it came out like this:
“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
It’s bad enough that he’s being condescending. John Kerry is where he is today not through diligent application in school, but by being willing to do anything to advance himself no matter what.
But far worse is that he’s trying to turn a policy disagreement into a stupid joke. Literally. Great, that’s who I want trying to determine national policy. I guess that means Kerry’s idol, JFK, is a dumb fratboy like Bush because he got stuck in Vietnam – the original “quagmire”.
Not every politician can tell a joke, and it really isn’t a senatorial requirement, but I don’t think that let’s JoKe off the hook. Besides, calling them stupid woudn’t have been near as bad as things he’s actually called them – war criminals.
What are the things Democrats complain about Bush?
That he’s a poor public speaker? Guess what, this latest from Kerry only shows that Kerry’s worse.
That he doesn’t admit mistakes? Has Kerry admitted his mistake and apologized? Ha, he’s gone the blame everybody else route. [And now belatedly apologized.]
That he’s dumb? Hey, Kerry got worse grades in school. And he flubbed an easy joke.
Look, I find that Kerry is everything that the Democrats today complain about Bush (including the liar part) only moreso, yet not only can they stomach Kerry, they made him their Presidential candidate in 2004. The Democrats could have been a contender – they could have put the standard in Joe Lieberman’s capable hands in 2004 but instead that went with a pathetic loser like Kerry and kicked Lieberman out of the party.
