Kathy Callahan Learns Her Lesson

Kathy Callahan contributed two grand to the Hillary campaign on her Visa card, but was shocked when Hillary sucked her credit card dry, taking another three grand in unauthorized charges. That's what we judgemental types call stealing. You know, kind of like stealing $100,000 in a cattle futures scam. The Hillary campaign also charged her for an event she never attended and not just once but twice. That pushed the theft to $5800. To add insult to injury, Hillary's theft led to a series of overdrafts which cost Kathy another four hundred bucks in bank fees. Was She Pissed. And she wasn't alone:

"Matt McQuenney who works in the compliance department at HRC headquarters told me verbatim -"What happened to you with credit card errors is happening to others,. You are not alone. Kathy, I'm trying hard to find out where and who it's coming from. What's going on!""

Additional research unearthed a long list of donors who had been charged up to nine grand which had been subsequently refunded. It was obviously not an anomaly, but a policy.

Kathy begged and pleaded for a month with the Hillary campaign to get her money back to no avail. The Hillary people made no apology for the theft. Instead, they tried to bullshit her:

"Kathy Callahan, you are going to be with us all the way to the White House...So let's leave the money where it is and we'll save time on inevitable future donations and transactions!"

In other words, Hillary is not looting your credit card but merely taking the donations in advance that she is sure you'll make later. So, what's so wrong about that? Aside from the theft, the $5,800 the Hillary campaign stole was $1,200 over the legal limit for donations. But then, what are a few broken laws to Hillary? Why should laws apply to Hillary at all?

Kathy Callahan got no justice from the Hillary campaign until she filed a police report and emailed the Hillary campaign about it. She received a phone call and email immediately from Allison Wright, compliance officer at the Hillary headquarters in Virginia: "Kathy, please don't do anything, formally! I will send you whatever you want back, immediately!" And that's how Kathy got back $5300. She was still stuck for the $400 in overdraft charges.

It's a little peek into the future of what the administration of President Hillary would be like, where the government believes it has first claim on your money and thinks you should be glad to give it up to support them.

Jihadis to Hillary: Please Pick Up The Phone!

"It's 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep, but there's a phone in the White House, and it's ringing. Your vote will decide who answers that call. Who do you want answering the phone?"

Hillary Clinton's ad claims she is the best one to answer that phone when the next crisis comes. Barack Obama's counterpunching ad claims he would be the better one to answer that phone since he opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. Of course, Republicans would claim that McCain would be the best man of all to answer the phone since he's the one who has been most severely tested under fire. However, nobody's asking the terrorists who they'd most like to be answering the phone when they make it ring. Turns out, terrorists hope Democrats answer the phone, especially Hillary.

Aaron Klein grew up as an Orthodox Jew in Philadelphia who found that jihadists in London were receptive to interviews with him, a student in Yeshiva University in New York City, and remarkably talkative. Intrigued by the experience, he became a journalist in Jerusalem, where he found Middle Eastern terrorists just as verbose and often bluntly honest about their goals. Klein wrote it all down in "Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollyood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew!"

Klein was surprised to find that Islamic terrorists in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank live in nicely appointed apartments with state of the art communications gear and they pay close attention to American politics. The terrorists are very much encouraged by the Democrats' talk of pulling out of Iraq. Muhammad Saadi, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad, told Klein,

"As Arabs and Muslims we feel proud of this talk. Very proud from the great successes of the Iraqi resistance. This success that brought the big superpower of the world to discuss a possible withdrawal."

Saadi laughed at Klein's question whether a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would end worldwide terrorism:

"There is no chance that the resistance will stop."

Abu Ayman, an Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin, loves the American liberals who compare Iraq to Vietnam:

"[The mujahedeen fighters] brought the Americans to speak for the first time seriously and sincerely that Iraq is becoming a new Vietnam and that they should fix a schedule for their withdrawal from Iraq."

The terrorists are fully on board the Democrat defeatist program for Iraq. Abu Jihad, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror organization, was thrilled with the Democrat primary debate:

"We see Hillary [Clinton] and other candidates are competing on who will withdraw from Iraq and who is guilty of supporting the Iraqi invasion. This is a moment of glory for the revolutionary movements in the Arab world in general and for the Iraqi resistance movement specifically. I think Democrats will do good if they will withdraw as soon as they are in power."

That's not to say the terrorists don't dig Obama. They do. Ala Senakreh of the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade:

"I think Obama's success that I heard about in the media is an important success. He won popularity in spite of the Zionists and the conservatives, whom he greatly defeated. I think he can be a great leader but I don't think that the American regime will allow him to progress. They will try to get rid of him."

Jihad Jaara of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, leader of the 2002 siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, wholeheartedly endorses the Democrats:

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat."

Klein writes that terrorists generally love Democrats and hate Republicans:

"... I have talked countless times off-the-record to terrorists about U.S. politics. And one hundred percent of the time the terror leaders favored the Democrats over the Republicans. I never once came across a single terrorist who supported any Republican. And why would they? The Democrats largely want to withdraw from Iraq. They want dialogue with Syria and Iran. The terrorists share those same goals, because they believe it will lead to the downfall of the American empire and the spread of Islam. ... Overwhelmingly, the terrorists favored Hillary Clinton to win in 2008."

The terrorists had nothing good to say about Republican candidates for president. Ramadan Adassi, an Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades leader, hates Giuliani:

"If I had the occasion to meet him I would hurt him. For the sake of the American people Giuliani shouldn't be elected. He is a disgusting guy and I think Americans must think very hard about their future and their soldiers who will be killed when they come to elect their leaders."

Ali Senkreh doesn't think much of John McCain either, whom he considers a "stupid person":

"To you McCain I say this so-called war on terror you're promoting is causing only the loss of life of innocent people all around the world and the loss of your dog soldiers, and what is the result for you? Zero. Nothing."

And terrorists really hate President Bush, almost as much as the Loony Left here at home. Adassi calls Bush:

"...a psychopath, an arrogant person whose hands are full of blood of American soldiers in Iraq, American civilians killed on September 11, Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghani and other innocent children and women and innocent civilians. A stupid and insane person who will cause the loss even of America's allies in the Arab world."

The terrorists agree with Hillary and Obama. The next time they attack America, they very much prefer that the Democrats are in the White House to answer the hotline. They figure the Democrats favor them.

Blue On Blue

Blue on blue is a military term for friendly fire, friendly blue forces firing on fellow blue forces instead of the hostile red forces. In the Democratic "blue" states, it seems the bluest candidate is drawing fire from those who once supported The Big Her. Andrew Sullivan prints an email from a good solid liberal reader telling of the surprising reaction to Hillary's victory in the New Hampshire primary:

Watched the NH returns with some friends last night, and something quite unexpected happened when the AP called it for Clinton -- inexplicable ANGER. I was surrounded by people in their early 30's, registered Democrats, receptive to the Clintons in the 90's, and I swear I thought someone was going to throw their wine glass at the tube during her 'victory' speech. We made a pact last that we all followed through on this morning -- logging on to BarackObama.com and donating $100 each to his campaign (this is the first time ANY of us has donated money to a campaign). Oh, and did I mention we're all New Yorkers?

Are lefties going for Obama as a vote against Hillary? Maybe. The liberals, aside from the true believers, have had enough of the Clintons. They don't like them. They really don't like them.

Camille Paglia explores why with a cutting analysis of Hillary's character, which she sees as formed by her "harsh, domineering father":

"Hillary's feckless, loutish brothers (who are kept at arm's length by her operation) took the brunt of Hugh Rodham's abuse in their genteel but claustrophobic home. Hillary is the barracuda who fought for dominance at their expense. Flashes of that ruthless old family drama have come out repeatedly in this campaign, as when Hillary could barely conceal her sneers at her fellow debaters onstage -- the wimpy, cringing brothers at the dinner table.

"Hillary's willingness to tolerate Bill's compulsive philandering is a function of her general contempt for men. She distrusts them and feels morally superior to them. Following the pattern of her long-suffering mother, she thinks it is her mission to endure every insult and personal degradation for a higher cause -- which, unlike her self-sacrificing mother, she identifies with her near-messianic personal ambition.

"It's no coincidence that Hillary's staff has always consisted mostly of adoring women, with nerdy or geeky guys forming an adjunct brain trust. Hillary's rumored hostility to uniformed military men and some Secret Service agents early in the first Clinton presidency probably belongs to this pattern. ...

"Contemptuous condescension seems to be Hillary's default mode with any male who criticizes her or stands in her way. It's a Nixonian reflex steeped in toxic gender bias. How will that play in the Muslim world? ...

"She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark ("Cue the tears!"). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary's real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House? Day one will just be more of the same."

Yet, Hillary continues her relentless march to the nomination, which she is likely to win. That presents we conservatives with the interesting prospect that the Democrats will nominate somebody to run for president whom they hate more than we do.

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?

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.