This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Warren Buffet; liar

    I’ve always admired Warren Buffet – he built an investment empire and became the third richest man in America from a paper route -but I believe he’s fallen off the deep end of liberal guilt. Speaking at a fund raiser for one of those Clintons – who knows which one – Buffet tried to attack the Bush tax cuts by lying;

     Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent.

    First of all, Buffet probably (and I say probably because I don’t have access to his tax return) is counting the increase in his net worth by the increase in the value of the stock he owns – that’s not taxed until he cashes the stock out. A better explanation of Buffet’s low income tax rate at Greg Mankiw’s Blog – an economist who understands wealth and taxation better than I do, apparently.

    Buffet’s secretary, if she made $60k was taxed at 25% – that’s the marginal tax rate for a single person earning $60,000 – however, just by claiming herself as an exemption, she’d drive that down to 15.39%. If she contributed to a retirement plan it’d go down even more. The only way she’d be taxed at a 30% marginal tax rate is if her income was over $160,000 as a single filer, or $270,000 married filing jointly.

    Buffet went on to say even more stupid stuff;

    Mr Buffett said that a Republican proposal to eliminate elements of inheritance tax, which raises about $30 billion a year from the assets of about 12,000 rich families, would broaden the disparity between rich and poor. He added that the Republicans would seek to recover lost revenue by increasing taxes for the less prosperous.

    He said: “You could take that $30 billion and give $1,000 to 30 million poor families. Or should you favour the 12,000 estates and make 30 million families pay an extra $1,000?”

    Hey, Warren, I know that you’ve got yours, I appreciate that you built your fortune with hard work and perserverance, how about letting the rest of us get ours now. How about we let those 12,000 estates keep that $30 billion and use it to hire people and instead of giving them a one time wad of $1000, we let them earn $1000/month for the rest of their lives. How about that?

    If he feels so guilty about his billions, he can just give it all away – but engaging in class envy and class warfare just makes him look like one of the stupidest men in America. Maybe he thinks whichever Clinton he was campaigning for would give him a fat, wet kiss. And, if the media would get off their lazy asses and do a minute’s worth of research on everything these bozos say, I wouldn’t have to do it for them.

  • Ya’all Leftists created Ann Coulter, so suck it up

    In the 1992 election, the Democrats spent the whole time yammering about “it’s the economy, stupid” even though the economy was on its way to recovery. But the Republicans didn’t have anyone to answer the charges – they were too polite to call the Democrats liars. The 1994 election was full of charges that Republicans would starve children and throw the elderly out in the street. The 1996 election had Democrats charging that electing Dole would bring more burning Black churches in the South. And all of these charges went unanswered.

    David Horowitz, in 1998, wrote in his book “The Politics of Bad Faith” that Republicans needed to battle the Democrats using their own tactics – little did he know that Republican was already well-known  among many Conservatives. Ann Coulter wrote her first book “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” – a credible, well sourced legal brief for the impeachment of the President.

    Since the Left couldn’t dispute her facts, they attacked Ann personally and as time went on, she became nastier to counter the nasty attacks against her. Now, she’s nastier than almost anyone I knew in all my years as a paratrooper. So nasty, there’s hardly a Conservative that’ll defend her. David Horowitz, who called for a Conservative to step forward like Coulter, condemned her tactics when she was fired from USA Today in 2004.

    Hell, tonight I watched her on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC show call him an idiot! Larry Kudlow, for pete’s sake.

    And the laughable part of this latest dust-up is about a woman who used her cancer to increase fund raising for her silver-spoon-born husband who tried to run his neighbor out of the neighborhood because of the way he could afford to live and talks about Two Americas while he’s clearly in the America most of us aren’t. Edwards has used his dead son as a campaign issue, called us all morons by claiming to have taken a $1/2 million consulting job so he could learn about poverty and expected us to believe it – and operated a charity to cure poverty which so far has only helped Edwards afford his campaign.

    Elizabeth Edwards had the unmitigated gall to accuse Coulter that she “lowers the political dialogue at precisely the time we need to raise it.” The political dialogue reached its low in 1992, doll. And then this portly twit’s husband used his wife’s plea to Coulter as a fund-raising theme. Yeah, that raises the political dialogue.

    Ya know, I’m probably the only person left in America who feels sorry for Ann Coulter and the venom that she deals with every moment of every day – perhaps not undeservedly. But she’s a creation of the Left, so they should just suck it up. If she wasn’t so effective at uncovering their hypocrisy and criminal behavior, they’d ignore her. 

    And unless you’ve seen the whole clip of Coulter’s comments about Edwards’ assasination (not the clipped piece that’s been circulating) shut up until you have the whole story. Curt at Flopping Aces has the complete video.

  • Militantly militant militants

    Just checking my news today and I found this from the AP in a story that was titled “Israeli troops kill 10 Palestinians“;

    Israeli fire struck a Gaza City house, killing four people, including two militants and a 12-year-old boy, medics said. Five militants were killed in fighting with the Israelis in another outlying part of the city, Palestinians said.

    In southern Gaza, an Islamic Jihad militant was killed in a clash with troops in the town of Khan Younis. Hospital officials said a total of 40 people were wounded by Israeli shells in Gaza City.

    Two more Palestinians died in other violence. In Khan Younis, a Hamas militant was killed while mishandling explosives, and a senior Islamic Jihad member was killed in what Palestinians said was an airstrike. Israel, which usually acknowledges airstrikes, denied involvement.

    Another Palestinian militant died from wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday, medical officials said.

    So doesn’t anyone at AP have a Thesaurus? 5 uses of the same word in 4 paragraphs and seven sentences.

    Oh and the story was misleading – the Israelis didn’t kill Palestinians – they killed those rabid dogs that travel in that pack called “Hamas’. And since the 12-year-old boy was killed along with two “militants”, what’s to say that 12-year-old boy didn’t have his militant days, too?

  • Spineless RINOs give Reid hope

    According to S.A. Miller in today’s Washington Times, Limp-rag Lugar and Voinovich (RINO – OH) have given Dingy Harry Reid hope;

    Ohio Sen. George V. Voinovich yesterday called for a “military disengagement” from Iraq, the second Republican this week to voice doubts about President Bush’s troop-surge strategy while simultaneously discrediting Democrats’ plans for an abrupt pullout.

    Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a speech Monday that the president should “downsize the U.S. military’s role in Iraq” and forge a new Middle East strategy.

    Democratic leaders and antiwar groups seized upon the remarks, especially Mr. Lugar’s, as evidence their plan to isolate Mr. Bush from his Republican allies was working.

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who vows by fall to pass a troop-withdrawal bill, called Mr. Lugar’s speech “a turning point” in the war debate.

    But Mr. Voinovich and Mr. Lugar oppose Democratic alternatives, including pullout timetables they say would undermine U.S. credibility.

    So why’d they even say what they said? As Jules Crittenden wrote “[Lugar] and Voinovich don’t want to be against a U.S. troop presence in Iraq.  They just doesn’t want to be for it.”

    Why couldn’t these two goofballs carry their monkey-asses up to the White House and talk to the President in private instead of shooting off their big, fat mouths in public?

    The lawmakers’ careful moves to challenge Mr. Bush while not outright joining antiwar Democrats highlights the rocky political landscape confronting Republicans as the war they have loyally supported grows more unpopular each day.

    Hey! Dumbasses! War is always unpopular, for Pete’s sake. And the only reason it’s dragged out this long is because stupid morons such as yourselves won’t

    Mr. Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, plan in September to pursue more measures to end the war.

    They backed down last month when Mr. Bush vetoed a timetable to pullout troops by April. Next time, they hope enough Republicans will defect to give them the two-thirds majority vote needed to override a veto.

    Of course, two Republicans don’t mean squat in the Big Scheme of Things, but I’m tired of Leftists who email me these articles about some Republican that the Left thought was the stupidest moron on the planet last week – but suddenly he’s a freakin’ rocket surgeon because he agrees incidently to some goofball Leftist tenet – yeah, I’m talking about you, Bink.

  • Iran worries John Bolton

    Yes, Iran has asked for UN inspectors to take a look at their nuclear program to prove the Iranians aren’t building weapons, according to the International Tribune;

    A team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency will travel to Tehran in the coming weeks at the invitation of the Iranian government to try to clear up longstanding questions about the Iranian nuclear program, the nuclear agency said Monday.

    Iran issued the invitation after a flurry of meetings among Ali Larijani, its chief negotiator; Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the nuclear agency, and Javier Solana, foreign policy chief of the European Union.

    The purpose of the visit is to “develop an action plan for resolving outstanding issues” relating to the Iranian nuclear program, a spokesman for the Vienna-based agency said. She added that the inspectors would leave for Tehran “as early as practicable.”

    Diplomats close to the agency said the move by Iran seemed calculated to stem the rising tide of pressure over its nuclear ambitions. With Tehran refusing to suspend its enrichment of uranium, the United Nations Security Council has begun to deliberate over a fresh set of sanctions against the country.

    Of course, they’ll show the inspectors every tiny detail of their program (notice; that’s sarcasm). Yeah, they’re running out the clock on sanctions. They saw Hussein play the same game with the UN for 12 years and they took notes. Hussein just didn’t use his time to build nukes. John Bolton, in the Jerusalem Post, says it’s too late for diplomacy with Iran;

    Bolton, however, was witheringly critical of the ongoing diplomatic contacts with Teheran, which he said were merely playing into the hands of the regime.

    “The current approach of the Europeans and the Americans is not just doomed to failure, but dangerous,” he said. “Dealing with [the Iranians] just gives them what they want, which is more time…

    “We have fiddled away four years, in which Europe tried to persuade Iran to give up voluntarily,” he complained. “Iran in those four years mastered uranium conversion from solid to gas and now enrichment to weapons grade… We lost four years to feckless European diplomacy and our options are very limited.”

    I tend to agree with Bolton – and although the responsibility ultimately lies with the president and his failure to act forcibly against Iran, part of the blame has to be visited upon the anti-war-at-any-cost Left. Iran is the source of all evil in the Middle East – they supply Syria (who supplies Hezbollah and Hamas), they gave shelter to al Qaeda and Taliban operatives during the US-backed liberation of Afghanistan, they supply al Qaeda in Iraq as well as Shi’ite militias (the Mahdi Army, for example) and they gave shelter to Mooky al Sadr in the early days of the “surge”.

    The reason we ended up doing so poorly strategically in Vietnam is because the our own Left resisted  our incursion into Cambodia to shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail – a few kilometers inside Cambodia. Without that supply line, the North Vietnamese Army in South Vietnam as well as the Viet Cong would’ve withered and died – and millions of Vietnamese lives would have been saved.

    Unless we can stem the flow of weapons, reinforcements and supplies at the source (in Iran), we’re going to learn the same lesson all over again – while the Left dances on the graves of our troops like they did for twenty years after the Viet Nam War.

    Just like we have to learn the lesson that Arabs don’t negotiate well with the West all over again – every year.

    Pamela Gellar Oshry of Atlas Shrugs is reporting riots in Iran that I’m not reading about anywhere else (Gateway Pundit has videos and photos of the aftermath) and Mike at Lamplighter is reporting another assasination of an Iranian mullah.

  • Chavez’ brain-drain (Updated)

    Yesterday I posted this article from CNN Money that Chavez decided to let some oil companies leave Venezuela since they weren’t interested renegotiating with the Chavez government for the operation of their oilfields. At the time no one was sure which companies planned on leaving. Today we find out that it was Exxon and ConocoPhillips;

    Two US oil companies have moved a step closer to pulling out of Venezuela. Exxon Mobil and Conoco Phillips are both reported to have rejected an offer from the government of President Hugo Chavez to continue their operations in the OPEC-member nation’s most promising oil reserve. Venezuela has set a deadline for foreign companies to accept its terms for keeping them in the massive Orinoco reserve projects as it moves to nationalise the country’s oil industry. Observers say another American company, Chevron, as well as Norway’s Statoil, Britain’s BP and France’s Total are expected to sign a deal.

    An article from the Wall Street Journal (requires subscription) tells about the deal that the oil companies were forced to walk away from;

    Earlier this year, Venezuela said the companies had until June 26 to turn over at least 60% ownership of the projects, including four large heavy-oil fields with a combined output of nearly 600,000 barrels a day. The projects’ estimated value is some $31 billion.

    Attempts to meet the Venezuelan government halfway were unsuccessful, said the person familiar with the matter, so ConocoPhillips decided to end talks and preserve its right to seek international arbitration. Venezuela has assets in the U.S., including refineries owned by PDVSA’s Citgo Petroleum Corp. Western oil companies have discussed swapping stakes in Venezuelan oil fields for Citgo refineries in Illinois, Louisiana and Texas. A Citgo spokesman declined to comment.

    Another interesting story from the Wall Street Journal (requires subscription) tells about Venezuelan oilfield workers who are moving to Alberta, Canada to find work – away from Chavez (and explains my traffic from Alberta);

    Frigid, remote Alberta has become one of the world’s fastest growing enclaves of Venezuelans, rivaling such warm-weather spots as Weston, Fla., outside Miami; and Sugar Land, Texas, near Houston. There are now 3,000 Venezuelan-Albertan families, up from 800 or so last year. Some Albertans now call Evergreen, a Calgary housing development, “Vene-green” because of the 100 families who have bought split-level homes there, and dangle Venezuelan flags from car rearview mirrors.

    The loss of so many skilled oil workers has hit PdVSA hard. Since Mr. Chávez took power in 1999, Venezuela’s oil production — according to U.S. government statistics — is down to 2.4 million barrels a day, from 3.1 million barrels a day, despite high prices. (Venezuela has consistently accused the U.S. of undercounting PdVSA’s production in recent years.)

    So already Chavez is in trouble. I feel sorry for the people who believed that Chavez was the answer to their poverty.

    UPDATED: Conoco, according to a new story from the Wall Street Journal, may cost Venezuela some money in the short-term;

    Conoco isn’t washing its hands of its assets in Venezuela, though it says it will take a $4.5 billion impairment charge in its second-quarter earnings. The company’s assets there represent about 5% of its oil-and-gas equivalent production last year. Exxon’s Venezuelan assets are about 1% of its overall output for 2006.

    […]

    However, even if a Conoco arbitration claim is successful, it could be years before the company gets any money. Still, Venezuela has considerable international assets that Conoco could attach. These include PdVSA’s ownership of Citgo Petroleum Corp. — which has several valuable refineries in the U.S. — and of tankers full of crude oil landing in ports along the Gulf Coast and elsewhere. A Citgo spokesman declined to comment.

    […]

    BP won an arbitration case against Libya in the 1970s after the North African nation nationalized, and chased tankers of Libyan crude around the world to seize them as payment. Within the past year, Western companies that purchased debt for unpaid for construction work in the Congo have tried to seize tankers of Congolese oil to satisfy arbitration awards.

    Of course, this won’t hurt Chavez, only the Venezuelan people. And Chavez can blame the big oil companies – or it’ll serve as his excuse to seize more private assets.

  • John Murtha; the broad side of the barn

    I love taking shots at Jack Murtha – for one thing you can’t miss him no matter where you shoot. Physically or otherwise.

    There is still no answer from his office on his forthcoming apology to the Marines he publicly indicted as cold blooded murders. I still call every morning like clockwork – but oddly, Murtha hasn’t heard anything.

    Well, today the Washington Times editorial board took their shots at him in “John Murtha, venture capitalist“;

    Funny how attempts at congressional ethics reform keep running into roadblocks like Rep. Jack Murtha. The Pennsylvania Democrat and chair of the House defense appropriations subcommittee is best known in this context as the man who once called the ethics package “total crap.” He represents an economically depressed corner of southwest Pennsylvania whose largest city, Johnstown, has lost 5 percent of its population since 1990. Not even considering the man’s unique personal qualities, one senses where this earmark story is headed.

    “Murtha has almost — but not quite — single-handedly created a new economy in his district,” concludes Roll Call this week in an overview of the lawmaker’s earmarking activities.

    […]

    The self-styled “most ethical and honest Congress in history” must get a grip on Mr. Murtha and friends if it is to make any headway whatsoever on ethics reforms. At this rate, Mr. Murtha just about torpedoes whatever chance House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to deliver on her campaign promises.

    The Pittsburgh Post Gazette calls Murtha “The King of Pork“;

    Are you the owner of business that is looking to get some big federal contracts? A move to Johnstown, hometown of Rep. John Murtha, might help, according to today’s Roll Call.

    […]

    “Murtha has almost – but not quite – single-handedly created a new economy in his district, with start-up companies getting Murtha earmarks, getting contracts from other companies that have gotten Murtha earmarks or getting trained on how to get government money by other institutions that have gotten Murtha earmarks.

    “A good guide to the patterns of Murtha’s largesse is the client list of KSA Consulting, a lobbying firm that employs a former Murtha staffer and used to employ Murtha’s brother, Kit Murtha.

    […]

    “The pattern that appears dominant is that the companies’ federal contract dollars expand shortly after they open an office in the 12th Congressional district – though it is not entirely clear how much of their work is actually conducted in the district.” 

    The Roll Call story (subscription required) goes into greater detail – here’s a sample;

    Kit Murtha, who says he retired from KSA a year ago, told Roll Call that he doesn’t believe there is any connection between the earmarks and the companies’ move to the Johnstown area. “You can’t really answer that … which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” he said. KSA represents “people that are in Johnstown, and some came to Johnstown, and which came first, and why, you can’t say.”

    But KSA’s client list indicates a pattern. Applied Ordnance Technologies was a Maryland-based firm that signed up with KSA in 2001, opened a Johnstown office in 2004 and saw the value of its government contracts jump from $12 million in 2003 to $21 million in 2004 and $24 million in 2005.

    Murtha’s office issued a press release declaring that “Congressman Murtha helped to attract AOT to Johnstown.” Murtha said in the release, “AOT represents the type of organization that is helping to revitalize our communities — small, technology-based companies with potential to grow.”  

    […]

    Rodney Ruddock, chairman of the Indiana County Commission, pointed out that local efforts are geared toward weaning these businesses off defense contracts and getting them to broaden into other work that is more sustainable. “We don’t want to put all of our eggs into the defense industry basket,” Ruddock said.

    Instead, companies are shifting into homeland security work, Ruddock noted, in part with the assistance of the John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security at IUP.

    The institute itself grew out of Murtha earmarks. The university, in announcing the center in 2003, said that “Congressman Murtha has arranged for more than $20 million in funding to IUP for homeland security initiatives.”

    I think it’s totally laughable that there’s a John P. Murtha Institute for Homeland Security. That’s like opening the Barney Fife Academy of Police Sciences.

    Now, much of this isn’t news – we’ve been hearing about KSA Consulting since last summer before the Congressional midterms. So why are we not hearing of Congressional investigations? If this was a Republican, we’d be reading everyday about it – Hell, we read every day about Republican scandals that haven’t ever happened.

    So I guess we now know why Murtha has positioned himself as the (ughh) darling of the anti-war Left – it makes him bulletproof. As long as he says the most outrageous things about the troops, Pelosi, et al. will leave him alone. It really tells something about the Left – they threw Joe Lieberman, probably the most ethical Democrat in Washington, out of the boat because of his pro-terror war stance, but they’ll cover for a crook like Murtha because of his pro-terrorist stance.

    I take some satisfaction that Roll Call gets the same reactions I get from Murtha’s office;

    Murtha’s office declined to provide comment for this article.

    The Influence Peddler and Don Surber have good summaries of the Roll Call Article. 

  • Christopher Hitchens takes on Islamic Rage Boy

    I met Mr. Hitchens briefly at an event at the National Press Club a few years back – right after he left The Nation for his support of the war against terrorism. We spoke for several minutes and he was a friendly-enough guy – so friendly and interesting that I’ve found it very hard to criticize anything he’s written since.This bit of uncommon sense he’s written for Slate reminds me of those few minutes I spent with him that evening all of those years ago;

    This mental and moral capitulation has a bearing on the argument about Iraq, as well. We are incessantly told that the removal of the Saddam Hussein despotism has inflamed the world’s Muslims against us and made Iraq hospitable to terrorism, for all the world as if Baathism had not been pumping out jihadist rhetoric for the past decade (as it still does from Damascus, allied to Tehran). But how are we to know what will incite such rage? A caricature published in Copenhagen appears to do it. A crass remark from Josef Ratzinger (leader of an anti-war church) seems to have the same effect. A rumor from Guantanamo will convulse Peshawar, the Muslim press preaches that the Jews brought down the Twin Towers, and a single citation in a British honors list will cause the Iranian state-run press to repeat its claim that the British government—along with the Israelis, of course—paid Salman Rushdie to write The Satanic Verses to begin with. Exactly how is such a mentality to be placated?

    We may have to put up with the Rage Boys of the world, but we ought not to do their work for them, and we must not cry before we have been hurt.

    There’s nothing else to add. No matter how hard I try. Good job, Mr. Hitchens.

    Someone tell Rage Boy to get his angryface out – Gates of Vienna‘s Baron Bodissey (by way of Gateway Pundit) reports that some Danes have burned Muhammed in effigy.