Humpty Dumpty & The Old World Order: There's no question that the relationship between America and Europe has changed drastically in the post 9/11 world. Victor Davis Hanson explains what the difference is...
"Our troubles with Europe are said to arise from differing views of the world order and an imbalance in military power. Yet these new tensions cannot truly be understood without the appreciation that there are no longer 300 Soviet divisions poised to plow through West Germany. With such a common threat, natural differences between Europe and the United States - from the positioning of Pershing tactical missiles on German soil to prevent Soviet nuclear intimidation, to continental criticism of the American role in Vietnam and Central America - always were aired within certain understood and relatively polite parameters of common history and interests.
America, after all, was appreciated for ending Hitler's rule - and immediately after for pledging its youth and national security in an effort at keeping a murderous totalitarianism out of a recovering Europe. With a common and deadly enemy nearby, Western Europeans had no utopian illusions that the United Nations, rather than NATO and America, could stop an aggressive Soviet premier should he choose to fire up his tanks. The idea that a German president would bark out anti-American invective at a mass rally would have been inconceivable 20 years ago. But now Herr Schroeder does so routinely - not because his people hate us or because we his deserve antipathy, but simply because he can."
Bingo. No matter what America or Europe does, it's not going to be like it was before the aftershocks of 9/11 decimated the last remnants of the world order formed in response to the Cold War. Humpty Dumpty has been shattered into a thousand pieces and nobody is going to be able to put him back on his wall...
An Economist Andrew Sullivan Isn't: Sully shows all the critical thinking skills of Maureen Dowd after a three martini lunch as he reviews a poorly written article in the Financial Times about America's future deficits. Here's a quote from the article and Sully's comment...
"The study's analysis of future deficits dwarfs previous estimates of the financial challenge facing Washington. It is roughly equivalent to 10 times the publicly held national debt, four years of US economic output or more than 94 per cent of all US household assets. Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman, last week bemoaned what he called Washington's "deafening" silence about the future crunch."
With each Bush budget, the fiscal future of this country - including its ability to fight necessary wars - is being gutted. Why are there so few conservative voices protesting?
I don't know, maybe there are so few voices protesting because the numbers quoted in that article have absolutely nothing to do with the Bush budget. Come on, how can Sullivan think that a piddly 350 billion dollar tax cut is going to cause the deficit to balloon like that (44 trillion dollars is the figure the article mentions)? I expect those sorts of comments from partisan ultra-leftists who never let the facts get in the way of smears against the right, but what's Sullivan's excuse?
By the way, if you look at the interview itself you'll find that the Financial Times left out this VERY relevant info (which is why I called the article poorly written)...
"Kent Smetters: Our calculation of a $44,000bn present value shortfall is actually very conservative. Our estimate of the Social Security liability is only around $7,000bn which is $3,000bn less than what it appears in the Trustees report. The reason why our Social Security number is smaller is that we calculate it under OMB assumptions, which are different than the assumptions used by the Trustees. Our Medicare number of over $36,000bn is calculated under very conservative health-care growth assumptions. Unfortunately, the Trustees' have not yet calculated that number for Medicare. But still it's very clear that almost all the problems are SS and Medicare. It's not the rest of the government that's a problem."
So the problem is with Social Security and Medicare just as you'd expect. The Financial Times should have made that clear and Sullivan should have known better.
Hat tip to Two--Four for pointing out the text of the interview.
***Update***: Donald Luskin weighs in with an excellent post on this subject.
***Update #2***:Assume The Position does a great post on this 75 year projected deficit that Andrew Sullivan implies that the Bush Administration is responsible for.
Europeans Shocked By The Obvious: Apparently the Euroweenies are shocked, shocked I tell you, at the mundane comments that Paul Wolfowitz recently made to Vanity Fair. Conservatives have been saying about the same things that Wolfowitz just did for months. Let me show you what I mean by posting Wolfowitz's "controversial" statements said along with things I said wrote ago...
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason."
What Wolfowitz is pointing out here is the same thing I talked about in a post called, "Marketing The War" way back in October of 2002.
"To begin with, Bush doesn't really care that Saddam is breaking UN resolutions (neither do I for that matter). But unfortunately, there are a lot of nations who do at least claim to care about what the UN thinks. So Bush is simply making the argument that is most likely to appeal to them. And that is the logical thing to do.
For example, let's say Europe decided that they wouldn't go along with invading Iraq unless they were convinced that, "Santa Claus approves of it." Well, the proper response to that wouldn't be, "You bunch of idiots, Santa Claus isn't real. Why are you talking to us about a fictional character?" Instead, you'd say,
"Well Santa certainly wouldn't approve of the children's prison that Saddam built. Did you know that Saddam has actually tortured children in front of their parents? It's so awful in Iraq -- people are too poor to buy presents for each other and the children are starving. If we got rid of Saddam they could have a real Christmas in Iraq!"
In short, what I said back then and what Wolfowitz is saying now is that, "you don't catch flies with vinegar." Putting it another way, Europeans couldn't care less about our security so we emphasized that Saddam was making WMD and thereby breaking UN Resolutions.
The other thing that people seem to seizing on is Wolfowitz saying that we wanted to get out of Saudi Arabia...
In the interview, Wolfowitz cited one outcome of the war that was "almost unnoticed - but it's huge": it removed the need to maintain American forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam was in power. Vanity Fair interpreted Wolfowitz to say that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia was a reason for the war.
"...Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government," Wolfowitz said. "It's been a huge recruiting device for al-Qaida. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things."
"Saddam Hussein is deliberately starving hundreds of thousands of his citizens and blaming sanctions called for by the US for their deaths. Is that true? Not at all. No Iraqi has ever starved because of the sanctions in Iraq. However, it has been an effective propaganda tool for Hussein. Also, the United States keeps 5000 troops in Saudi Arabia in order to help stop a possible Iraqi attack. This issue has been Osama Bin Laden's cause celebre and has aided him in recruiting Muslims who think that it's not proper for the US to have troops in the "holy land" of Saudi Arabia. Simply getting rid of Saddam Hussein will allow us to remove both of these "irritants" that stir anti-American sentiment in the Middle East."
So again, there's what Wolfowitz said a year and a half ago and I can assure I haven't been alone in pointing out this very obvious benefit of deposing Saddam. So what's the controversy supposed to be here?
Frank Tips for Meeting With Jacques Chirac By Frank J: President Bush will be meeting with Jacques Chirac today for the first time since the war, so I have some tips for him about the meeting:
* Start by working the body. You'll want to start slow, which means a series of punches to his gut.
* Use object in the room around you. This doesn't just mean to pick up those objects and break them over Chirac, put to also use Chriac's head to break objects that are too big to pick up.
* Make sure to build up some momentum before smashing his head into the wall. You'll need some good momentum to leave a nice impression in the drywall.
* Avoid the sleeper hold. It's pointless if he's unconscious.
* Remember your joints. Joints such as your knee and elbow make great blunt weapons. Don't forget to use them.
* Use your body weight. Eventually it will become tiresome to keep propping Chirac up. Then you may want to do some elbow drops on him.
* When he is down, Texas Two-Step. Like I have to remind you.
* This isn't boxing; all blows are legal. Some may say it's unsporting to go for the groin, but I say it makes a nice finale after you've thoroughly beaten him through other means.
In the end, diplomacy is a fluid thing, and you really have to read the other party and adjust your strategy according. Just don't be afraid to be creative. Godspeed, Mr. President.
If you liked this satire by Frank J, you can read more of his work at IMAO.
The Questions Conspiracy Theorists Need To Ask Themselves
The Questions Conspiracy Theorists Need To Ask Themselves: Because I regularly read through offbeat websites in order to compile new editions of "Anyone can post on the internet", I get a lot of opportunities to peruse the latest crackpot conspiracy theories. During any given week I may read about Planet X, the Illuminati / Free Mason / Jewish / (take your pick) plot to rule the world, concentration camps being prepared across America by the military, the "Bush Family Evil Empire", and even lizard people who rule world. If some raving moonbat has come up with it, I've probably run across it at one point or another.
Now if these ridiculous beliefs were relegated to the fringes of society I probably wouldn't bother with writing an editorial about shooting down the thinking behind these theories. However, this sort of bizarre paranoia has crept into "mainstream thinking". Things like the "Jewish Conservatives manipulating the President", "The Republicans rigged the 2002 elections", & "Bush knew (about 9/11)" have been tossed around by people many see as more credible than the average fruit loop writing for these conspiracy websites. That's why I thought it would be worth tossing out a few questions that anyone who starts to buy into these sorts of theories should consider. To begin with...(Cont)
I Still Expect To Find WMD In Iraq: I have to admit that I was surprised that we didn't almost immediately find with Weapons of Mass Destruction after we took Iraq. After all, you don't refuse to tell how you destroyed your WMD, have thousands of chem protection suits made for your soldiers, refuse to cooperate with inspectors, build rockets that can carry WMD, keep your scientists from talking to inspectors, have bioweapon labs made, & take tens of billions of dollars in sanctions losses if you don't have a WMD program. Hell, the inspectors even found a previously disclosed artillery shell filled with mustard gas that the Iraqis hadn't destroyed well before the war started. So given all that, it's hard to come up with a scenario that would explain why all those things were going on if Saddam didn't have WMD.
But of course, the left is already starting to get hysterical and claim that the Bush administration lied about the WMD. Here's Paul Begala laying the spin on thicker than even the Senate's biggest windbag Robert Byrd ...
"I'm pretty damn angry about these 170 families that are never going to see their daddy again or their son again because they were sent over there to die in the most noble cause you can imagine: for their country."
...And their country owes it to [those families] to find out why in the world we were so badly misinformed."
...Which is worse: lying about a girlfriend or lying about a war? There aren't 169 people dead over Monica Lewinsky. The president must never, never lie - even about who he's sleeping with - but certainly about sending men to die."
Were I on left -- I'd be VERY careful about going down this road for a number reasons. Polls show the American people aren't that concerned about it, there are Democrats running for President who backed the invasion as well, there was lots of commonly known evidence that Hussein had WMD, and of course, you always open yourself for devastating replies like, "So what do you want to do, put Saddam in charge & apologize? Should we round the Iraqi kids up and stick them back in prison while we're at it?"
More importantly, when we come up with a single vial of anthrax or an artillery shell laced with mustard gas, everyone who claims Bush was lying is going to look like an idiot. Personally, I look forward to the day that I wake up to see, "SMOKING GUN!!! WMD FOUND IN IRAQI DESERT" in two-inch high letters on the Drudge Report. Then RWN and pages all over the net are going to compile quotes from people like Begala and we're going to rub their noses in it. I still think that day is coming and the sound and fury from the left in the interim will only make it sweeter...
The Link RWN And Win Contest: I want to promote RWN's new forms of advertising & the page at the same time, so I came up with a little contest for all the bloggers out there. Here's how it works...
The contest runs from Tuesday, May the 27th through Sunday, June the 1st. To be eligible, all you have to do is send 20 of your readers to RWN over the course of two days and then NOTIFY ME at johnhawkins -at- rightwingnews.com or post in the comments that you want to participate.
How I we verify that you've sent us 20 readers in two days time? Simple, I'm going to go by RWN's statistics tracker which you can view by going here. Go to referrers and you can see the numbers.
So what happens then? I'm going to write down all the blogs that are eligible and put them into a hat. 5 people are going to win "daily news ads". That means you get a link in RWN's "daily news" section marked as an advertisement. It's a maximum of 20 words and normally it costs $3.
Better yet, 2 people are going to get to post ads on RWN's main page. The post will be marked as an advertisement & it can run up to 400 words. The post will begin at the top of the page and will work it's way down. Posts on RWN's front page stay up for 3 days. Normally, these ads cost $7.50.
So if you're looking for a way to get a little bit more attention for your blog, this is a great way to do it and it's easy enough that even the smallest bloggers should be able to pull it off. Good luck...
***Legal Disclaimer***: RWN reserves the right to decline to allow anyone to participate in the contest and to deny the winner an ad for any reason of our choice. I don't expect to prevent anyone from participating or winning an ad, but better safe than sorry in our litigious society.
***Update***: The blogs that have asked to be included in the contest and that have thus far sent RWN 20 sets of eyballs are...
You Don't Sue Just Because Your Kid Hurts Himself On A Playground
You Don't Sue Just Because Your Kid Hurts Himself On A Playground:This sort of lawsuit is a ridiculous waste of time and money...
"The mother of a 9-year-old boy injured when he accidentally hung himself on playground equipment at an East Palo Alto elementary school last year is suing the Ravenswood City School District for damages.
In the suit filed Tuesday, East Palo Alto resident Dorothy McGee said school officials were negligent when her son, Deshawn Watson, accidentally got tangled in a jump rope hanging from playground equipment at Green Oaks Academy, which is also named in the lawsuit.
..."These kids need to be watched at the school," McGee said. "When people send their kids to school, they expect them to be watched."
The suit says the day before, Watson and his friends were seen swinging from the "monkey bars" with a jump rope, and school officials did nothing. The playground supervisors, the suit said, should have known that this act could injure children.
McGee's suit claims the boy suffered "permanent and severe physical, mental, and emotional injuries that have caused him to suffer in academics and his social and private life. and will affect his professional life in the future.
...While Watson's general health is fine now, McGee said her son hasn't been doing well mentally since the accident. He used to be a good student and now his grades are poor, she said.
"He's a changed boy," she said."
I can tell you from personal experience that children can & do hurt themselves in all sorts of unusual ways. When I was 7, I broke my leg and spent weeks in traction after making a tackle in a Boy's Club football game. When I was just a little older, I was in a open field with another kid and we were going hit some golf balls. Not knowing any better, I stood directly behind him -- too close behind him -- and he split my forehead wide open with his backswing. If my haircut is short enough you may be able to see the faint scar if I can ever get on O'Reilly's show. Then in my early teens, I somehow managed to impale my leg on the round, dull, knob of a chain link fence that looked about like this as I was trying to crawl over it to get a basketball. I was literally HANGING on this fence with my leg ripped open for a while and I remember telling my uncle that the inside of leg looked like macaroni as he was taking me to the hospital.
Now given all that, I can understand how this kid somehow or another managed to nearly hang himself on the monkey bars. That's just the sort of thing that can happen to kids (although fortunately not too often). There's no reason for any responsible adult to go, "Oh no, that kid is playing on the monkey bars with a jump rope, he might hang himself!!" If as a society, we flipped out and awarded money to people every time some kid gets hurt playing outside, we'd have to shut down every playground, gymnasium, and organized athletics league in the country. That's why suits like this one should be thrown out of court...
Males Proven A Minority, Demand Equality From Female Oppressors
Males Proven A Minority, Demand Equality From Female Oppressors By Shawn M. Thorgersen: NEW YORK - Research proving that there are more females than males in the United States has prompted men to gather in protest against the female majority. "We're a minority, and we're going to complain like a minority!" shouted one protester.
"We've taken their tyranny for too long," said another activist. "It's time to bring The Woman down!"
According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. population is composed of 49.1% males and 50.9% females. The 1.8% difference makes, according to the gathering males, a "huge difference" in the way men have been treated throughout history. Jack Dillon, a leader of the growing protest, states, "There's like, this ceiling above males in the work force. You can't really see it, but you know it's there, and it keeps guys like me from getting better salaries."
One protester, demanding to be heard, removed his briefs and lit them on fire. "I am Man, hear me say things!" Another added, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Find out what it means to me!"
Marcus Donzelli, a student and aspiring model, stated, "Look at the magazines- what do you see on the cover? Women everywhere. On women's magazines and men's magazines! This inequality has to stop!"
Another demonstrator, Manny "Monica" Garcez, an employee at Lucky Cheng's, commented, "Maybe now people will understand why I dress up. It's a woman's world, boys. Get used to it."
A handful of real women appeared on the scene, some also in protest. Said Jenny Gilbert of New Jersey, "I had no idea that we [women] were hurting our brothers so much." Another female, who wished to remain anonymous, remarked, "I don't really have a problem with all of this protesting. It's cute, and it makes the men feel important, but it's not like it's going to change anything."
The event ended peacefully at four p.m., when a local bar began its happy hour. When asked if there would be another rally, many were unsure. Dillon stated, "We need a leader. Preferably a reverend - they seem to be good at this kind of stuff."
If you liked this satire by Shawn Thorgersen, you can read more of his work at Broken Newz.
Premonitions Of An American Holocaust: It's a shame that Premonitions Of An American Holocaust isn't being updated anymore because I think I could have gotten multiple editions of ACPOTI (Anyone can post on the internet) out of it. Not only is the author loony, she posted emails from her deranged readers as well.
There was lots of material about the Illuminati, 9/11, the New World Order, and America going Fascist and tossing people into concentration camps. Sure it's insane, but it's creatively insane. For example, how many other raving moonbats have had the moxie to claim that Chandra Levy's disappearance was tied into 9/11? Is there another conspiracy website that would have the cajones to claim that Yasser Arafat is actually helping Israel? This is just brilliantly kooky stuff.
Unfortunately, the person who created the page stopped posting. Maybe she's in an asylum, gibbering under her bed, or perhaps she's trying to hide from the Illuminati in the wilds of Montana. In any case, I found her page to be entertaining in an insane sort of way. After you read some of these excerpts from Premonitions Of An American Holocaust, you'll see what I mean...
Thanks For Sending Us Traffic!: RWN appreciates people who send us traffic. That's why I wanted to post the websites that have sent RWN the most traffic in 2003....
It's Just A Matter Of Time Until The Left Starts Calling For This In America
Not Only Is It Bad Idea, It's None Of The Government's Business: It's only a matter of time until we hear a Democrat in Congress calling for this to be done in the United States as well...
"A British legislator has proposed banning sport utility vehicles from congested city streets, and his comments prompted howls of protest from motoring groups.
..."The consequences of ever-increasing use of these vehicles means that other road users often feel intimidated -- pedestrians and cyclists certainly do -- use of fossil fuels increases dramatically, and our small urban towns, particularly historic towns, are being overwhelmed in some cases by these vehicles.
Baker also said that car manufactures should quit trying to sell SUVs to city dwellers.
"There are only so many vehicles they can sell to farmers and others who would legitimately use such vehicles," he said. "The slogans which they are using to sell their vehicles are aimed at urban users."
"The whole point of these vehicles and the way they're marketed is to give the impression to those who buy them that they somehow are getting more confidence, they're getting a personality boost, they're getting an opportunity to fight through the 'urban jungle.'" he said.
Baker said he plans to push for a cross-party campaign to stop city dwellers using SUVs for trips to school and the supermarket."
Maybe it's just me, but whether it's in Britain or the United States, it's none of the government's business what sort of car you drive. If you can afford the car, afford the insurance, and afford the gas, what business does the government have telling you that you can't have that car? Maybe people want to drive SUVs because they like to go off-roading on occasion. Perhaps they have a lot of kids to haul around or feel safer in an SUV than a compact. Perchance they saw a commercial and just thought the SUV looked "cool". In any case, it's none of the government's affair.
Whether it's in Europe or America, we have too many politicians who believe that their every whim should be turned into law and backed by the full force of their government. Government is not the solution to every problem and as a matter of fact, government has no business acting like what PJ O'Rourke once called a, "rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic". Too often, we simply shoot ideas like this down while missing the larger point -- government has no business getting involved in the issue in the first place.
The Laffer Curve & Tax Cuts: After reading some of the comments in The Left Should Take A Tip From Freud On War & Taxes post, I thought I should explain why cutting taxes often leads to an INCREASE in government revenues despite what the Democrats in Congress would have you believe. The best way to do that is to introduce you (well, at least some of you) to the Laffer Curve.
Now obviously, if the tax rate is too low, the government will take in a minimal amount of revenue, that's a given. However -- and this is a concept that many people on the left often have trouble grasping -- if taxes are TOO HIGH, revenue will FALL as well.
Now why is that? Well, just imagine what would happen if the government took 100% of the money that you made -- would you even go to work tomorrow? Few people would and even if they did, they'd find a way to do their work "off the books" so the government wouldn't get a piece of it.
Of course, a 100% tax is an extreme example, but the principle is the same even for lesser (yet still high) tax rates. As the tax rates go higher, more people will choose not do extra work, look for tax shelters, & will try to cheat on their taxes.
So how does a government know that taxes have gotten too high to maximize revenue? Truthfully it doesn't, but by watching incoming revenue and the behavior of the populace, a government can make an educated guess and then adjust the tax rate.
Naturally, it does take a while for these tax cuts to have an impact. The law has to be changed, the checks have to cut and sent out, people have to receive the money and spend it, businesses have to see their revenues increasing and make changes, etc, etc, all across the economic spectrum. So you can probably assume that it'll take 12-18 months for a change in tax policy to really impact the economy. In the interim, revenue may FALL and the government should ideally cut spending to keep from running a deficit and to get lean and mean (unfortunately, this part of the equation is often left out).
The Bush tax cut is gong to stimulate the economy and increase government revenue just like the Harding, Kennedy, and Reagan administration tax cuts did. Now if only we had a Balanced Budget Amendment to keep the government from frittering away large portions of the new tax money that's going to come rolling in...
The Sweet Smell Of Simply Bob By Marni Malarkey: Former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed Al-Sahaf, currently on "administrative leave" from his duties in Baghdad, has signed a contract with the fashion house Chanel to promote a new cologne for men. The fragrance will be called "Simply Bob," after the minister's widely used nickname "Baghdad Bob" and will be available in US stores June 1st, "just in time for Father's Day," said Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel's chief designer.
Al-Sahaf made the announcement at a surprise press conference in Paris yesterday morning, saying that "now that the American infidels have been forced out of Baghdad -- Allah be praised -- I am free to focus on other things. Like my career in the fashion and beauty industry. Saddam -- praise him -- always said I smelled really good and I think if men around the world buy 'Simply Bob,' they will smell really good too and will have to beat the chicks off with a gold-plated AK47, just like I always have to do." Al-Sahaf also said that the naysayers who have criticized his career change were "stupid and condemned. They are stupid...and they are condemned."
Lagerfeld unveiled the first print ad for "Simply Bob," in which a beret and khaki-wearing Al-Sahaf is seen sitting against a backdrop featuring the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and saying "Surrender to 'Simply Bob' or Allah will roast your stomach in hell at the hands of the Iraqis."
If you liked this satire by Marni Malarkey, you can read more of her work at Broken Newz.
Democrats Have To Learn That Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar
The Left Should Take A Tip From Freud On War & Taxes: Nine days after 9/11, George Bush said,
"And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."
So the plan was to go after states that support terrorism as well as the terrorists themselves & it was immediately embraced by Conservatives who talked & wrote endlessly about the concept. So did the left meet Conservatives in the intellectual arena and debate the idea? No, to the contrary, the left largely ignored the reasons the right gave for going to war and launched a wholesale attack on vast numbers of hidden motives the Bush administration supposedly had for going to war...as if there wasn't an army of Conservative pundits, commentators, & TV personalities explaining exactly what we wanted to do. So we were told that it was a "war for oil", about "revenge for Bush's daddy", "to help make Bush's business friends rich", yada, yada, yada....anything, but what Bush and Conservatives claimed it was about. It was the elephant in the living room that the left simply refused to address.
Now fast forward to the present. After helping to put together one of the most successful military campaigns in the history of mankind, the Bush administration is now pushing a tax cut. The reasoning behind it is pretty simple. We can look back to the Harding, Kennedy, and Reagan administrations to see that significant tax cuts stimulated the economy and led to massive economic growth. So since the economy is soft now, it makes a lot of sense to do exactly the same thing and wait for the economy to boom. Now you'd think that whether the left agreed or disagreed with that idea, they'd at least try to deal with it, but again, to the contrary, they're doing anything but deal with this idea head on. For example, here's Paul Krugman's theory about the tax cuts...
"It's no secret that right-wing ideologues want to abolish programs Americans take for granted. But not long ago, to suggest that the Bush administration's policies might actually be driven by those ideologues - that the administration was deliberately setting the country up for a fiscal crisis in which popular social programs could be sharply cut - was to be accused of spouting conspiracy theories.
How can this be happening? Most people, even most liberals, are complacent. They don't realize how dire the fiscal outlook really is, and they don't read what the ideologues write. They imagine that the Bush administration, like the Reagan administration, will modify our system only at the edges, that it won't destroy the social safety net built up over the past 70 years.
But the people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need. The Financial Times, it seems, now understands what's going on, but when will the public wake up?"
Yes, Bush only wants to cut taxes so he can create a financial crisis that will give us an excuse "to do away with the social and economic system we have". It's all so clear....not.
Let me help the left out by reminding them of something Freud said. As those of you who took Psychology 101 remember, Freud was well known for finding sexual imagery in dreams and ordinary things. But, when one of his students wondered what the significance of Freud's smoking a cigar might be, Freud replied, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Exactly....and sometimes a war against a terrorist supporting state is designed to end their support for terrorism and sometimes a tax cut is designed to stimulate the economy.
Uday's Depravity: Uday Hussein may have been more vile, savage, & evil than even his father. Just reading these excerpts about Uday from an article on Hussein's sons gave me the willies. I could just imagine living in Iraq before we liberated the country and being at the mercy of this cold-hearted degenerate...
"...Uday (demanded) that the ex-governor bring his daughter and her 12-year-old sister to his next party. "Your daughters will be my girlfriends, or I'll wipe you off the face of the earth." The man complied, surrendering both girls.
...A chef at Baghdad's exclusive Hunting Club recalls a wedding party that Uday crashed in the late 1990s. After Uday left the hall, the bride, a beautiful woman from a prominent family, went missing. "The bodyguards closed all the doors, didn't let anybody out," the chef remembers. "Women were yelling and crying, 'What happened to her?'" The groom knew. "He took a pistol and shot himself," says the chef, placing his forefinger under his chin.
Last October another bride, 18, was dragged, resisting, into a guardhouse on one of Uday's properties, according to a maid who worked there. The maid says she saw a guard rip off the woman's white wedding dress and lock her, crying, in a bathroom. After Uday arrived, the maid heard screaming. Later she was called to clean up. The body of the woman was carried out in a military blanket, she said. There were acid burns on her left shoulder and the left side of her face. The maid found bloodstains on Uday's mattress and clumps of black hair and peeled flesh in the bedroom. A guard told her, "Don't say anything about what you see, or you and your family will be finished."
...According to his chief bodyguard, when Uday learned that one of his close comrades, who knew of his many misdeeds, was planning to leave Iraq, he invited him to his 37th-birthday party and had him arrested. An eyewitness at the prison where the man was held says members of the Fedayeen grabbed his tongue with pliers and sliced it off with a scalpel so he could not talk. A maid who cleaned one of Uday's houses says she once saw him lop off the ear of one of his guards and then use a welder's torch on his face.
A family friend says the day Uday discovered the Internet was "a black day for Iraqis," because he used it to learn of torture methods from other ages and lands that he decided to try. He would lock victims in coffins for days at a time, says the source, or put them in pillories. According to a family friend, he also liked to have offenders beaten on one side. Then he would order medical tests and have the thrashings continue until the kidney on that side had conclusively failed.
...Uday demanded that beautiful women who had sex with his brother be brought to him. In several cases, Shabaan said, Uday also had sex with the woman, then had her branded on the buttocks with a horseshoe, producing a scar in the shape of a U, for Uday."
When that monster has to do the perp walk in-between two members of US Special Forces or if better yet, he's found with his brains blown out of the back of his skull, the world will be a better place indeed.
The Real 'Dynamics Of A Blogosphere Story': There have been a couple of articles getting a lot of attention lately that discuss how stories pick up steam and get bigger in the blogosphere (You can read them here & here). Let me be the first to tell you -- both of those stories are as fake as Michael Jackson's nose! If you want to know how stories start in the blogosphere and actually get so big that they effect the President himself, all you have to do is watch and learn. First, a story breaks and then...
Tim Blair mentions it in passing while making fun of Margo Kingston.
Charles Johnson suggests that maybe there's something about it on Arafat's desk.
Stephen Green...well he doesn't comment on it because he's working on, "The Bachelor's Guide to Getting Laid Through Cooking" instead of blogging.
Michele Catalano points out that this is the sort of thing Ted Rall would cover if he could draw and had talent.
Then depending on the nature of the story, President Bush either calls for a new tax cut, plans an invasion of another country, or decides to put a whoopee cushion in Jacques Chirac's chair at the G8 summit.
Rumsfeld Apologizes for Hyping Saddam Threat By Scott Ott
Rumsfeld Apologizes for Hyping Saddam Threat By Scott Ott: U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized to Senate Democrats today for pre-war "hyping" of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.
"I'm sorry Senators Biden, Rockefeller, Byrd, Roberts and others," said a contrite Mr. Rumsfeld. "We overestimated the threat posed by a lunatic dictator, who hated the U.S. and Israel, and who paid rewards to families of Palestinian terrorists. In an age when two of the world's tallest buildings can be brought down with tools used by the stockboy at K-Mart, we should have demanded more concrete evidence of exotic weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was helpless as a kitten up a tree."
Sen. Rockefeller, D-WV, saidCongress must determine whether the administration "intentionally overestimated" Iraq's weapons program, or "just misread it. ... In either case it's a very bad outcome."
Mr. Rumsfeld agreed, "What an awful outcome. We deeply regret freeing the Iraqi people from a murderous gang of thugs masquerading in the United Nations as a representative republic. We're sorry that the Iraqi people have discovered thousands of graves of their Saddam-murdered relatives. It's none of our business if people want to live like that."
If you liked this satire by Scott Ott, you can read more of his work at Scrappleface.
Now obviously, if the tax rate is too low, the government will take in a minimal amount of revenue, that's a given. However -- and this is a concept that many people on the left often have trouble grasping -- if taxes are TOO HIGH, revenue will FALL as well. 
The Sweet Smell Of Simply Bob By Marni Malarkey: Former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed Al-Sahaf, currently on "administrative leave" from his duties in Baghdad, has signed a contract with the fashion house Chanel to promote a new cologne for men. The fragrance will be called "Simply Bob," after the minister's widely used nickname "Baghdad Bob" and will be available in US stores June 1st, "just in time for Father's Day," said Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel's chief designer. 
