Misc Commentary For Aug 5, 2004

— It’s hard for me to believe that a company like Subway would be dumb enough to do something like this…

“Picture this: a gigantic cheeseburger (with tomatoes and lettuce) slamming into two high-rise buildings, as cartoon characters run from the flaming ruins.

It’s clearly a takeoff on the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center, and according to the Virginia-based Center for Individual Freedom, the illustration appears on page 18 of a 30-page “food diary” distributed by Subway sandwich shops in Germany.

Last week, the Center for Individual Freedom launched a grassroots campaign against anti-American tray-liners at German subway stores.

The tray-liners — a promotion for the film “Super Size Me” — showed an obese Statue of Liberty holding a burger and fries in her hands, under a headline asking, “Why are Americans so fat?” According to the Center for Individual Freedom, the headline used the word “Amis,” which is considered a derogatory term for Americans.”

In America it’s “Oh, look at how much weight Jared has lost with our delicious sandwiches” and in Germany’s it’s “Watch us mock the Statue of Liberty and knock down (wink, wink) the WTC”.

I’ll remember that the next time I’m deciding where to pick-up a sub.

— Here’s Larry Kudlow on who really took a bath when the economy was soft earlier in Bush’s term…

“There was a recession in 2000-01 and it was deep. But you have to look behind the headline real GDP numbers to understand it. When you do that, you find that a very unusual set of events were at work four years ago. Events worth remembering today.

Consumer spending never once declined in the recession of 2000-01. This is because middle-class income actually increased by nearly 5 percent between 2000 and 2002, according to the latest IRS statistics. This fact runs completely counter to the Kerry-Edwards argument about a “middle-class squeeze.”

Still, overall individual income declined 5 percent during this period. Why? Upper-end income suffered mightily. The top tax brackets lost about 28 percent of their income, on average, largely from the stock market crash and the fall in high-paying jobs. Twelve percent of the folks who fought their way above $200,000 a year slipped below that level in 2002.

At the rarified income level of $10 million or more, those with the highest propensity to save and invest lost a stunning 63 percent of their income during 2000-02. Total capital-gains income fell by 29 percent, and dividend income dropped 17 percent. When Bill Clinton recently told the Democrats in Boston that top tax-rate payers don’t need the extra money, he was sorely uninformed.”

— — This game is ridiculously addictive. It’s too bad I ran across it today or I would have gotten my fave Bible Quotes out today instead of tomorrow…

— I’m really looking forward to reading Michelle Malkin’s new book ““In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror.”

Today, internment is treated as a black and white issue. But, I’ve never thought it was as clear cut as it’s made out to be. When you’re in a fight to the finish with another country that’s going to end with one side or the other being decimated and conquered, I don’t think you can afford to let citizens of that enemy country roam free within your borders — even if they have dual citizenship (which is part of the reason I oppose the whole concept of dual citizenship).

Let’s just say that I’ll be keeping an open mind on the subject and I’ll be very interested to see what Michelle has to say about the subject in her book.

— I’m with Bridget Johnson. Negative ads and dirty campaigning is a necessity in these days and times, especially for Republicans.

The reality is that the mainstream press is full of liberals who are to going ignore or bury much of the negative information about a Democratic candidate while playing up anything negative they can find in the record of a Republican candidate to the hilt. So, if you’re a Republican and you’re not willing to go negative to win, then you don’t belong in a competitive political race on the national level.

Besides, the voters deserve to know not only the picture that the candidate wants to paint of himself, but all the warts and negatives too. Talking about the virtues of particular candidates is fine, but their flaws are just as important…

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