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Barack Obama's Tax Increases—What's the Point?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2008 Comment (11)My Thomas Jefferson Street colleague Jack Farrell has done his best to vindicate the impact of Barack Obama's proposed tax hikes on personal income. Leaving aside Jack's reliance on the assumptions of the Tax Policy Center (which he fails to note is a decidedly left-leaning organization), his conclusion seems to be: Only a few "millionaires" would get whacked, so what's the big deal?
Fine, Jack believes income taxes should be raised. But to what end? As best I can tell, he simply holds that some people make "too much."
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Bonnie Erbe's Cheap Shot on Sarah Palin
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (21)After taking a barb from liberal journalist Elaine Lafferty for her dim assessment of Sarah Palin's intelligence, my Thomas Jefferson Street colleague Bonnie Erbe responds:
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Ted Stevens's Convictions: Good News for Conservatives With Conviction
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (6)There's been precious little good news for conservatives lately, but Monday brought a hint of sunshine. Sen. Ted Stevens, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, was found guilty on all seven counts of corruption by a Washington, D.C., jury.
The longtime pol failed to disclose that he received things of value—notably, construction work on what he calls his "chalet"—from an Alaskan company to which he steered contracts, and for that, he is legally guilty. But in a broader sense, he is also morally guilty for turning the public coffers into a candy jar and corrupting his nominal party.
My old boss Robert Novak is fond of saying that there are three parties on Capitol Hill: the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Appropriators. And while Stevens's conviction will no doubt play to the GOP's disadvantage in the coming week, his exit can serve as a useful and necessary reminder to Republican lawmakers that, in the words of Barry Goldwater, they have worshiped false idols.
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Edmund Morris's Misuse of Teddy Roosevelt and History in the New York Times
Tweet Share on Facebook October 27, 2008 Comment (12)The historian Edmund Morris has an op-ed in today's New York Times in which, by cherry-picking quotes from Teddy Roosevelt, he attempts to make the case that America's 26th president would support Barack Obama.
Like those silly op-eds that are written in the open-letter style, this colloquy formula is nothing more than a crutch for someone too lazy or muddled to write a persuasive piece on his own. Morris's article, however, is detestable not just for its pedantic structure but for its perniciousness.
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Cut Taxes? That's Racism!
Tweet Share on Facebook October 22, 2008 Comment (12)Writing in the Kansas City Star, columnist Lewis Diuguid gets to the heart of why Team McCain describes Obama's tax pledge to "spread the wealth around" as socialist:
The "socialist" label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.
And what might those "ugly historical roots" be? Might they include Marx, Engels, Mao. and the economic, mental, and physical enslavement their grand ideas wrought?
No, it turns out that socialism's real ugliness came from those who fought against it. Just as with McCain and Palin today, the capitalist pigs' opposition to socialism was really a foil for their racism. As Diuguid attempts to explain (emphases his):
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North Korea and the Farce of the State Department Terror List
Tweet Share on Facebook October 20, 2008 Comment (12)What will be the fate of the Bush administration's deal with North Korea? One victim will be the false notion of paper containment when the hermit kingdom surely cheats on the arrangement. Another more satisfying victim will be the "pragmatists" who, despite common sense and history, championed the deal. More immediately, however, there is State's "terror list" itself, which by North Korea's removal is revealed as a joke.
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Christopher Buckley's Obama Embrace—Hope Over Reason
Tweet Share on Facebook October 15, 2008 Comment (34)My Thomas Jefferson Street colleague Bonnie Erbe is reveling in the right's reaction to Christopher Buckley's decision to vote for Barack Obama. Buckley, of course, is the son of the late conservative godfather William F. Buckley Jr. but also a bright mind in his own right, so his defection deserves to be noticed.
Bonnie takes a few jabs at conservative reaction, which is justifiably indignant but, admittedly, in many instances downright nasty. Well, yes, the right has its share of impolite radicals too.
Far more important, however, is the substance of Buckley's dissent.
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Liberals Wrong About Cindy McCain's POW Experience and PTSD
Tweet Share on Facebook October 14, 2008 Comment (16)The latest issue of Marie Claire magazine carries an interview I had with Cindy McCain, and left-wing commentators are having a field day over comments she made about her husband's POW experience. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann was particularly exercised, calling McCain's comments "a mendacious attack on the troops" and "callous."
So what was her offensive comment? Here's the interview transcript:
MC: You met your husband after his POW days. To what extent is that still with you—or is it a part of history?
CM: My husband will be the first one to tell you that that's in the past. Certainly it's a part of who he is, but he doesn't dwell on it. It's not part of a daily experience that we experience or anything like that. But it has shaped him. It has made him the leader that he is.MC: But no cold sweats in the middle of the night?
CM: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. My husband, he'd be the first one to tell you that he was trained to do what he was doing. The guys who had the trouble were the 18-year-olds who were drafted. He was trained, he went to the Naval Academy, he was a trained United States naval officer, and so he knew what he was doing.Sorry, but I fail to see how this disparages soldiers or makes light of post-traumatic stress syndrome.
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Rape, Murder, and Mutilation: Happy Columbus Day, University Style
Tweet Share on Facebook October 14, 2008 Comment (5)PALO ALTO, CALIF.—Arriving here for a stint at the venerable Hoover Institution on Stanford's campus, I was treated to a celebration of Columbus Day, university style. Written in colorful chalk descending the steps of the Meyer Library was "Columbus Day Celebrate His Death." In fact, all over the sidewalks that crisscross the central campus were similar festive messages: "Happy Rape, Mutilation and Murder Day," "Celebrating Genocide Since 1492" (written over a picture of the explorer), and—my personal favorite—"Celebrating Murder for 615 Years."
Using simple subtraction, 615 years ago brings us to 1393, which doesn't ring any bells with me. But 516 years ago would have been 1492. Maybe someone's time would be better spent in class.
Meanwhile, nearby there was a voter registration booth with a kind lady pushing absentee applications for swing states. She'd just registered two students and said business was brisk. Given the large banners celebrating black pride and—what else?—"Columbus Indigenous Peoples Day" hanging behind her, it's not hard to guess which presidential candidate is intended to benefit most.
If Bush infamously declared he was "a uniter, not a divider," perhaps Obama can claim to be the "uniter of dividers." Although for Stanford's radicals, division might be an overly complicated computation.
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Barack Obama, John Lewis, John McCain, and Despicable Relationships
Tweet Share on Facebook October 14, 2008 Comment (68)On Saturday, Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and icon of the civil rights era, lashed out at John McCain for "sowing seeds of hatred" and compared the GOP candidate to a racist.
"During another period, in the not-too-distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate," Lewis said. He added:
Sam Dealey
Sam Dealey, former editor of the Washington Times, is a principal at Monument Communications, a public-relations consultancy in Washington, D.C.
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