Camera, Good. Pen, Bad

Andrew Romano of Newsweek tells how Hillary is stiffing the press in her seven step program. Her embrace of photographers and stiff-arming of writers is part of her approach of form over substance. A more sinister interpretation would be that Hillary simply doesn't do freedom of the press. And why should She have to explain her plans to we mere mortals? Hillary Knows Best. Just Do What She Says. What do you think this is, a democracy?

Iraq Had WMDs

John Loftus, head of the non-governmental International Intelligence Summit, just released a report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program based on a private study of captured Iraqi documents:

"Roughly one-quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990s. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid-to-late-1990's. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003. His nuclear weapons equipment was hidden in enormous underwater warehouses beneath the Euphrates River. Saddam's entire nuclear inventory was later stolen from these warehouses right out from under the Americans' noses."

It appears that Syria began an atom bomb program based on the remnants of the Iraq nuclear program at a facility recently bombed by the Israelis.

Civilization Flows From The Barrel Of A Gun

Marko of Knoxville, Tennessee makes the case for the Second Ammendment in his post "Why The Gun Is Civilization":

"In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

"When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

"There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly."

The Laffer Curve

Gene Sperling, Hillary Clinton's chief economic advisor, rhetorically asked on a National Press Club panel discussion not so long ago: "The question is: Should we be giving an extra $120 billion to people in the top 1%?" Such is the arrogance of Hillary's gaggle of socialists that they believe any money you earn that they don't tax is a gift of the government to you. In their view, government has the first claim on your income. You have the last claim on the money you make.

That kind of thinking has led to the current status quo where the top 1% of wage earners pay almost 40% of all federal income tax while the bottom 50% of earners only kick in 3%. That's up from 34% of all federal income tax the top one percent paid in 2003 and way up from 25% in 1990. Hillary thinks they should pay even more.

You enter the top one percent by making $313,469. Now that's a pretty hefty income, an income very few people earn without working their ass off and taking considerable risks to provide goods and services their customers want. Sperling's question reeks of envy, a base motive for taking the fruit of somebody else's hard work, but a core value of Hillary's taxation scheme. Simply put, they think like thieves.

Michael Boskin, Rudy Giuliani's economic advisor, said, "There is no -- let me repeat -- no example in the last quarter-century of a large, complex economy that has been successful with high taxes. ... The Western Europeans have seen their standards of living decline by 30% in a little more than a generation because of their high taxes."

Europe's sick economy is caused partly by high taxes to sustain a bloated welfare state. It is the dysfunctional European model which Hillary's team holds up as an example to be emulated by the USA. It's the wrong road to follow for America.

The liberal impulse to overtax the rich is not only morally flawed, but self-defeating in that it diminishes total tax revenue by killing the geese who lay the golden eggs. To understand why, we need to revisit the Laffer Curve from the Reagan era, as shown in the illustration above.

Laffer says, sensibly enough, that you collect no taxes if your tax rate is zero. That anchors the left side of the curve. Likewise, you collect no taxes if your tax rate is 100% because no free person works if they don't get paid. That anchors the right side of the curve. In between those two anchor points is a curve which represents the amount of total amount of tax revenue for each tax rate. You might argue about the specific shape of that curve but it is indisputable that such a curve exists.

As you raise the tax rate from 0% to 1%, the tax revenue collected is directly proportional to the tax rate. The curve is probably a 45 degree slope for the first few percent increases in tax rates because it's too small for the taxed to notice. However, as the tax rate increases, the taxed take notice and begin changing their behavior. If you worked a job where you were paid less and less for each subsequent hour of overtime, it's unlikely you'd want to work much overtime.

In general, government gets less of anything it taxes and more of anything it subsidizes. When you tax work, you get less work. When you subsidize single mothers, you get more single mothers. When you tax the rewards for the extraordinary effort it takes to create a successful business, you get fewer successful businesses. For example, Congress slapped a luxury tax on yachts in 1990 which killed yacht sales and put 25,000 boat builders out of a job. Likewise, Hillary wants to soak successful businesspeople who create the small businesses which are the engines of wealth creation.

The Laffer Curve neatly illustrates that there is an optimum point of tax rates beyond which total tax revenues decline. That's why Bush can cut the tax rates and collect more taxes. It's the same principle Walmart uses to sell cheaper yet make a greater total profit. By contrast, liberals operate on a kind of cartoon economics that holds that greater profits can be had by simply increasing prices.

Liberals always push the tax rate beyond the optimum point to the back side of the Laffer Curve. The irony is that when conservatives like Reagan and Bush pull the tax rate back to the optimum point, tax revenues increase while liberals act like scorched cats. Their class warfare costs the government. They are more committed to punishing the successful than funding their own programs.

The First Republican, Abraham Lincoln, said it best: "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer."

We can't vote for Lincoln, but we can vote for an economically literate candidate like Giuliani while rejecting the cartoon economics of Hillary and her economic illiterates.

Ramadi

Douglas Halaspaska of US Cavalry On Point writes of the remarkable progress made in the Sunni Triangle, an area written off as ungovernable not so very long ago, in "So Much Has Changed...Observations from Ramadi":

"As I was sitting atop a sand bag wall interviewing a sergeant, a Marine 1st Lieutenant approached me. He explained that he was going to confront an Iraqi Policeman (who we’ll call Mohammad to protect his true identity) who was suspected of being involved in the insurgency during 2005. The situation was all the more extraordinary since Mohammad and the lieutenant are friends. As the Lt. casually mentioned that I would be able to ask some questions, I jumped off the wall, quickly gathered my gear, and wondered about what I would be witnessing.

"Sitting in a small room lined with cots and gear, the lieutenant talked to Mohammed through an Iraqi interpreter. “We know you were an insurgent during the fighting – you’re in no trouble – I just want you to tell me the truth.” Mohammad was now visibly shaking and appeared nervous before he quietly answered “yes.” “Did you ever fire on any Marines,” was the lieutenant’s first question. Mohammad was clearly concerned and replied with a long answer, but ultimately ended with a simple yes.

“I was in Ramadi during the same time, so you could have possibly been shooting at me,” stated the lieutenant. “It’s okay Mohammad - if you were shooting at me then I was firing back at you,” joked the lieutenant. The rest of the session involved the lieutenant and Mohammad exchanging promises to never fight again, and to work together to protect the city of Ramadi. Furthermore, pledges were exchanged that this new understanding, between friends, would not affect their friendship.

"It was beyond heartwarming to see these two former advisories – one a Marine, and the other an Iraqi Policeman – now working together as friends and comrades for a common cause. I came to Ramadi expecting a war and what I found was a city that has grown from the carnage, and all its inhabitants – both Iraqi and American – healing."

We're winning.

Ten Thousand

Patrick Poole notes in FrontPage magazine that, since the Sep 11 attacks, Islamic terrorists have made ten thousand terror attacks killing sixty thousand people and wounding ninety thousand. The toll of the carnage wrought by Muslims is documented in detail in the website, "The Religion of Peace (and a big stack of dead bodies."

Islamic Terror Attack No. 10,000 appears to be a bomb planted in a movie theater in Amritsar, India which was packed full of poor migrant workers watching the latest Bollywood comedy. Six dead, 32 wounded. Another glorious victory for Islam! Allah Akbar!

Glen Reinsford, the editor of the "Religion of Peace" website, notes that 225 Iraqis were accidently killed by US forces in collateral damage incidents in 2006, but 16,791 Iraqi civilians were killed on purpose by Islamic terrorists that same year. So the quiz question of the day is: Why does the vituperation of the Muslim world and the radical Left fall only upon America when Muslim terrorists kill 671 times as many Iraqis?

OK, I'll admit it's an easy question. The Left blames America first for everything. Muslims never take responsibility for anything. It's always the fault of the Other. And really, Muslims killing Muslims is not a moral problem worth noting for them.

Why The Saudis Are Evil Barbarians

Reason No. 1,000,006: A story about a teenager in Saudi Arabia taken from the Saudi Arab News:

"A year-and-a-half ago in the Eastern Province town of Qatif, a seven men gang-raped a 19-year-old girl 14 times. Three judges from the Qatif General Court sentenced the rape victim to 90 lashes for being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape. The sentences for the seven rapists ranged from 10 months to five years in prison.

"The Appeals Court sentenced the victim to 200 lashes and six months in prison. The seven rapists had their sentences increased to between two and nine years. The verdict came in as a shock to everybody.

"A source at the Qatif General Court said that the judges had informed the rape victim that the reason behind doubling her punishment was 'her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.'"

Leaving Islam

Poster Q_Q writes in "Left Islam To Never Look Back Again" in the very interesting FaithFreedom.org website:

"Here’s the story of how I came to leave and despise Islam and everything it stands for.

My parents are from India, my mother was born a hindu and my father a muslim. They met in college in Delhi, the usual thing happened and they got married. During the initial years, they continued to live in India where both worked in fairly well paying jobs. Neither of them was particularly religious & therefore neither tried to get the other to convert.

About three years after their wedding, they moved to Canada where my father’s sister already lived. My aunt and her family were particularly observant muslims and almost immediately began to pressure my father into becoming more religious, while at the same time exerting pressure upon my mother to convert. Worse, once my aunt found out that my parents were using birth control so that my mother could continue with her career, the pressure became even more intense.

Eventually, my father caved and in turn began to shove his religion down my mother’s throat. In order to save her marriage, she ended up converting and stopped using birth control. She became pregnant with twins (my sister & me) soon after. Once we were born, my father forbid my mother from returning to work and wanted her to become his personal baby factory so he could fulfil his warped religious obligations and have a ton of little muslim babies. For whatever reason however, my mother did not get pregnant again and in time my father began to talk about a second wife.

At the same time, under the influence of his extremely traditional brother-in-law, he had become physically abusive towards my mother and was always both physically and verbally abusive towards my sister. Towards me however, his darling son, he was completely permissive. I admit that as a child I took advantage of my father misogyny to gain the upper hand over my sister.

However, despite being the apple of my father’s eye, I was far more attached to my mother. By the time I reached the age of 5 or 6 I began to see that she was being made to suffer through no fault of her own. I also began to see my father for the monster that he had become as he became ever more religious with time.

When I was 7, my father beat my mother particularly badly one evening. When I confronted him about it, his response was chilling. Apparently, our beloved prophet had instructed his followers that it was appropriate and even necessary to beat our wives to keep them in line. I got a lengthy religious lecture from my father about this that evening. I suppose that at the age of 7 I was more intellectually mature than my 40 year old father as I saw the religious nonsense for the vile crap that it was and at the end of the conversation, I got went upstairs and called the police.

That day was the last time I spoke to my father for many many years. Criminal charges were filed against him, my mother, my sister and I all testified against him in court. He was sentenced to 15 years without parole. We also testified against his sister and brother-in-law for inciting conjugal violence. Ironically enough, my cousins testified against their parents as well. Both my aunt & uncle were sent to prison for two years each & their children came to live with us for the duration.

Of course once we were free of my father, my mother returned to her original hindu religion. My sister & I converted as well. My cousins, who at the time were in their teens (16 and 17) also left islam and became hindus.

Over the years, I am now 30, married and with a child of my own, I have often wondered about why my father underwent the transition from a perfectly normal, loving man to a complete monster. The only true changes that occurred in his life were that he moved from India to Canada and that he became progressively more religious and orthodox. The move in and of itself couldn’t change family dynamics therefore it had to have been the religious aspect that led to the changes in my father. Therefore, as an adult, I decided to find out more about islam.

I read the Quran & the hadiths as well as several books and commentaries written by both muslim and non-muslim scholars. The more I read, the more I came to understand how this religion can turn a perfectly normal man into a complete monster. And the more I find out about this religion the more I despise it.

Fortunately, once in prison, my father’s conscience began to bother him and he came to realize just how much pain he had caused. He too examined his metamorphosis and understood that islam was at the root of everything that had gone wrong in his life. He eventually abandoned islam as well and once he was released from prison he too converted to Hinduism.

Today my entire family is happy & healthy. And we have all learnt a very important lesson – never again will any of us allow a practicing muslim to enter our lives.

Orders From The Fuhrerbunker

Michael Crowley writes in "Bunker Hillary" in the New Republic about Hillary's smash-mouth style of press relations:

"Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record--"They're too smart," one furtively confides. "They'll figure out who I am"--privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers. Hillary's aides don't hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters' jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. "They're frightening!" says one reporter who has covered Clinton. "They don't see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game."

"Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage. "It's one of the few times I've seen journalists respect someone for beating the hell out of them," says a veteran Democratic media operative."

How much do you think the press would squeal if such Soviet-style news suppression were perpetrated by a Republican candidate? Isn't it odd how Democrats like Hillary have so little fondness for democracy, especially that messy freedom of speech?

Abu Bakr Al-Ba'shir

Abu Bakr Al-Ba'shir is the spiritual leader of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) in Indonesia. He was convicted of conspiracy in his group's bombing of nightclubs in Bali in 2002 which killed 202 and wounded 209, mostly Aussie tourists. Consequently, the US Department of State has designated Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya is also probably responsible for the 2003 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Kuningan, Jakarta which killed 12 and wounded 150. That bombing was most notable for tossing the severed head of the suicide bomber to a perch on the fifth floor overlooking the carnage. They went on to bomb the Australian embassy in 2004: 9 dead, 150+ wounded. It was Bali again in 2005 with twenty killed and 129 wounded.

Abu Bakr Al-Ba'shir gave his thoughts on Al-Arabiya TV on October 26, 2007:

"The path taken by many political parties in their effort to establish an Islamic regime is not the right path, because these parties adopt democracy. Democracy is not an Islamic means. Democracy runs counter to Islam, because it emphasizes the sovereignty of the people, whereas Islam emphasizes the sovereignty of Allah. Thus, if we are to submit to the law of Allah, Muslims have no choice but to say: 'We hear and obey.' In democracy, Allah's commands may be open to discussion, and if we agree with them, we accept them, but if we do not agree with them, we reject them. Herein lies the flaw. Therefore, as long as the Islamic political parties endeavor to adhere to Islam by means of democracy, they will not achieve their goal. ...

"I do not accept their concept of independent judgment, unless the bombing is carried out in the countries of the infidels who declared war against the Muslims, such as America. America has declared war on the Muslims, and therefore, we are permitted to carry out bombings there, because they are the ones who declared war against the Muslims. ...

"It is a duty… We are duty-bound to establish an Islamic state, and the Muslims are duty-bound to live in an Islamic country. Muslims are forbidden to live in an infidel country. Sheik Fawzan Al-Fawzan issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims to live in the countries of the infidels. That is why we are committed to establishing an Islamic state. The path that the Prophet Muhammad bid us to take is the path of preaching and Jihad. Waging Jihad is the proper conduct. That is why it is essential to establish an Islamic state by means of preaching and Jihad. We have tried to do this in Indonesia, by committing ourselves to Islamic preaching."

"I support Osama Bin Laden, as long as he wages Jihad for the sake of Allah, in order to implement the law of Allah."

Abu Bakr Al-Ba'shir maintains that the 2002 Bali bombings were hijacked by the CIA, saying that the bombs his supporters planted were not intended to kill anyone, just injure them. He claims the CIA substituted a deadlier "micro-nuclear bomb" for the safer bombs of his organization. Isn't that just like the CIA to pull a stunt like that, ruining a perfectly safe terrorist attack.

Abu Bakr Al-Ba'shir has a simple answer for what America and the West can do to stop terrorism, "They have to stop fighting Islam. That's impossible because it is sunnatullah [destiny, a law of nature], as Allah has said in the Koran. If they want to have peace, they have to accept to be governed by Islam." Everybody's cool with that, right?

Abu Bakr Al-Ba'shir's Islamic terror organization has butchered dozens of innocent Australian tourists but old Abu remains puzzled at Australia's animosity toward him, "But it would be impossible to go to Australia because if I went there I would be arrested and slandered by the Australian Government. The Australian Government still treats me like an enemy for reasons that are unclear."

I confess that I'm a judgemental guy but it's pretty clear that you can't reason or bargain or even have a rational conversation with the likes of Abu Bakr Al-Ba'shir or Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya. You have to crush them like bugs. So let's get to it.

Bush Was Right

Here is the Right Brothers singing their hit tune, "Bush Was Right." It sounds even better set to music. It's just our way of saying we will, we will rock you.

Listen to it here.

What Muslims Think

Muslim Wife is a Muslim woman who lives in Florida and posts her thoughts online in a blog. To represent herself, she posts the illustration above of a woman wearing an abaya robe and niqab face veil, as Saudis do. Here are some of her comments posted under "What's So Good About Fasting," where she describes a conversation with a non-Muslim:

Kaffir: Oooh, you're fasting?
Me: yup
Kaffir: No food?! No Drink?!
Me: nope
Kaffir: Not even water? Oh my gosh...I'm so sorry!
Me: Uh....I'm not.

Kaffir is an derogatory term used by Muslims to describe non-Muslims. It translates as "infidel," but it literally means "ingrate." Muslims see anyone who denies Allah and his purported Messenger Mohammed as ingrates who reject their truth.

A reader challenges Muslim Wife's rudeness:

Anonymous said…
You live in Florida in the United States and you use the word "kaffir" to refer to the people who live next door to you?
I'm not trying to be rude but I'm just curious as to why you would do that...

Another Muslim reader helpfully explains it to him:

abdullah said…
The kaffir (kuffur) are the enemies of
islam. They are less than human unless they revert to the one true way. It is acceptable to be rude to them - regardless of where you live, for they are less than us.

Muslim Wife said…
Anonymous: Did I do something wrong by calling a kaffir a kaffir? Anyways, Abdullah explained it well,masha'Allah, but I'll put it to ya like this...if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

If you were wondering why no Muslims complain about Islamic terrorism, Muslim Wife explains it in a post called "Tag, I'm It":

What Comes to Mind When I Hear
Car: stupid loud muffler
Murder: non-Muslim: Haha.

The reason the Muslim Wife is not objecting to the murder of non-Muslims is that she's too busy laughing about it. This is a Muslim woman, probably foreign, with a very good command of English, living in the US, who is amused when infidels are killed. And why shouldn't she be? That's Islam.

Thanks to JihadWatch

An Offer The Iranians Can't Refuse

Iran is blaming America for 152 dead dolphins which washed up on their shore at the port of Jask in southern Iran. Photos of dead dolphins are splashed all over the Iranian media to the general public consternation. While more rational heads hold that the dolphins were killed by fishermen, the sane don't rule Iran. There are several theories.

Sha'aban-Ali Nezami, head of Iran's state-run fisheries organisation,

"As these dolphins are not among the species normally found in the surrounding Persian Gulf and Oman Sea, probably the Americans - for tracking purposes - have brought them to carry out laboratory works in the Gulf region. This group of dolphins have not been able to tolerate the tests. The likely reason for these deaths is water pollution, the spreading of electro-magnetic waves by military ships or a kind of virus disease."

However, autopsies on the dolpins ruled out anything but the Americans, just as the crazy Persians suspected.

If they had watched "The Godfather," they might have considered another possibility. These dead dolphins dropped at their door could be a Sicilian message from the US Navy: If you build a nuke, you'll be sleeping with the fishes.