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

Category: Politics

  • Deja vu all over again

    Sitting here watching the Sunday morning shows, I was struck dumb listening to Democrats discussing options for the Iraq War. Specifically, it was on Fox News Sunday that I heard Joseph Biden posit the option to allow the Iraqi military to conduct a coup d’etat and unseat Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki whom Biden considers weak and not up to the task of leading Iraq. I immediately flashed on the 1963 coup in Viet Nam that the US State Department facilitated by looking the other way. It became the bloody shirt the Left waved through the later years of that war to illustrate the imperialist ambitions of the United States – fickle and blood thirsty ambitions.

    Now, here’s a child of the 60s, Joe Biden, endorsing the same type of policy that the Left told us was wrong with this country. Well, at first I shrugged it off – until Juan Williams, a scant few minutes later endorsed the same option.

    So now, having learned nothing from history, the Left, the party of the status quo, is promising us a return to the same types of programs that led to the downfall of their President Johnson who continued the policies and programs of  John Kennedy in regards to Viet Nam.

    Democrats have been comparing the war in Iraq to the Viet Nam War since the opening shots in 2003, and now they want to follow the same failed policies that embroiled us in Viet Nam – and all the while preaching to us about “quagmires” and “Tet of ’68”. Add this to their alternating calls for more troops in Iraq while, in the same breath, calling for troop strength reductions. Telling us how they support the troops, but they don’t believe our troops can get the job done. Democrats hamstring our intelligence efforts which are clearly preventing attacks against the US.

    Is this the kind of delusional, bipolar “plan” we’re being asked to support in the mid term election? 

  • The minimum wage fallacy

    Nancy Pelosi has declared that she’ll raise the Federal “minimum wage” her first 100 hours in office as Speaker of the House. Sounds good doesn’t it? All of those hard-working people will be lifted out of poverty by increasing their $5.15/hour a buck. Of course, who are those people that’ll be lifted from the depths of despair with an extra $40  every week?

    According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, out of 75,609,000 workers in 2005, 1.8 million are working at or below the minimum wage. Of those, 1.003 million are between 16 and 24 years old – high school and college aged. adobe creative cloud . So there are less than 800,000 people over the age of 25 working at or below the minimum wage.

    What kind of work are these people doing? BLS says that the large majority of these people are working in “Food preparation and serving related occupations” at 1.13 million in 2005. That’s over half of all minimum wage earners and it includes waiters, cooks, dish washers, bag boys – well, you get the idea.

    Here in the DC area, most of the restaurants pay minimum wage to their wait staff, but those waiters take home a coupla hundred bucks in tips every week – which is their incentive pay. Their employers guarantee a minimum wage, but if the employee works extra hard, they get a fat tip – more than Democrats would get them with a minimum wage increase. Sounds capitalistic doesn’t it?

    So there’s no breakdown by age by occupation, so we can only speculate on how many of those 800k people over the age of 25 (1.16% of the entire work force) actually make minimum wage, but I tend to believe that its statistically insignificant.

    Democrats are only appealing to their base to assuage their guilt about the way they feel the rest of us are doing.

    There’s probably very few Americans who are looking for a new house and car because the Democrats are finally putting those items within reach with their promise of a minimum wage increase.

    And if you include the tax increase the Democrats want to hit us with, how much will minimum wage earners really get in the end? When George W. Bush cut taxes in 2001, minimum wage earners didn’t have to pay their 15% income tax bill any longer – that has the effect of giving them a $30.90/week raise – $.78/hour – the effect of raising the minimum wage to $5.93/hr. And it didn’t cost employers anything – that’s probably what pisses off Democrats more than anything.

    So how many minimum wage earners will be pouring out in the streets to vote for Democrats so they can get their big wage increase? How many are buying new suits in hopes of landing that fat $6/hour job? More than likely, there’s only some pimple-faced kid hoping to get his new PSP a few weeks earlier thanks to Nancy (drain the swamp) Pelosi.

  • Islamic extremists campaigning for Democrats

    75 US troops have been killed this month so far. The average has been 70/month since the US attacked the Hussein government in 2003. US and Iraqi troops are prying al Qa’eda combatants from nooks and cranies in Baghdad. The Iraqi town of Amarah briefly fell into the hands of Shi-ite militia combatants yesterday - just a few miles from the border with Iran. That pudgy butterball with a novelty beard glued to his face al-Sadr is kicking up dust again. You have to ask yourself why this upswing all of a sudden?

    Easy answer – the Iranian government (the real enemy here) want to influence our elections. They want it to look as if the Republican Administration is losing the war. They want the Democrats to win the election, so the Iranians will win in their Islamic Revolution in Iraq. It’s the reason they launched missiles against Israel this year, its the reason Kim Jong-Il test-launched his sorry excuses for missiles and faked his nuclear explosion (I’m still convinced it was just a “dirty bomb” -type explosion). It’s the reason Hugo Chavez has been shooting off his big mouth lately – again.

    The enemies of this country, the enemies of our way-of-life and our relative tranquil existence know that they can defeat us only if Democrats have a say in our foreign policy. They saw what happened after Tet ’68 when the Viet Cong were reduced to the combat effectiveness of an understrength Boy Scout troop, yet they chased the world’s greatest Superpower from the continent.

    Our enemies saw a crude crowd in loincloths with little more than peashooters chase us from Somalia. They saw the crowds of Haitian teenagers chase our Navy from their port by simply waving their cane knives and machetes at the sea.

    And Democrats are more than willing to offer them peace at any cost. Not peace for Americans, by any measure, but rather peace for the enemies of freedom. In my 51 years, I’ve learned that the solution to any problem that seems the easiest, is always the wrong solution. The solution that always seems the most difficult, the one that requires the most investment of time, money and labor from me always has the longest lasting favorable effect.

    Cutting and running is an emotional response, and it’s a short term solution. If Americans put Democrats in charge of the House and Senate next month, it will be a cheap, emotional response to a complex problem. The same kind of cheap, emotional responses that have gotten us wrapped up in this war against islamic extremists in the first place. And it will only lead to greater, more expensive confrontation in the future.

  • Dems “appalled” that Reps protect “Secret” information

    Peter Hoekstra, R-M, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has suspended an as yet unknown Democrats staffer on the suspicion that he/she released the “Secret” classified document to the New York Times. Of course, the al Qa’eda wing of the Democrats party is outraged. California’s Jane Harmon, ranking Democrat on the Committee wrote Hoekstra that she’s “appalled” that Hoekstra would not allow the staffer near classified information while an investigation continues.

    Doesn’t this just sound like Democrats? They want to close down the Guantanmo Bay detention facility because someone spreads some rumors that our troops are being mean to thugs and murderers (prompting Senator Dick Durbin to compare our troops to SS concentration camp guards).

    They’re more upset at Reservists pointing at gentalia in Abu Garaib than they are upset at thugs and murderers cutting off the gentalia of our troops when they fall into the hands of our enemies.

    They don’t want intelligence agents to listen to the phonecalls of people who call from the US to known terrorists’ phone numbers.

    And now they don’t want a suspicious staffer to have his access to classified intelligence curtailed while he’s being investigated.

    What exactly will Democrats let us do to protect our National Security?

  • Democrat lies; how to lose an election

    Yesterday, I got an email from the VFW to support one of their latest causes. I always send the email, sign the petition and slip ’em a coupla bucks – the VFW has been good to me, so I’m good to them. Anyway, they sent an email in my name to my Congressman Chris VanHollen. Within a few minutes (maybe it was an hour), I get a reply with the standard “veterans are gods” kind of stuff you get from every elected official these days – especially from the guilt-ridden Left who cut their activist teeth by spitting on vets.

    But there was line that got my attention; “Unfortunately, sweeping tax cuts promoted by President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress have resulted in drastic cutbacks in VA services.  It has gotten so bad that at one point, VA officials in Washington were instructing VA hospital administrators to stop publicizing their services to veterans.  That is disgraceful.”

    If true, it certainly is disgraceful. So I emailed the Congressman’s office and asked them for the source of this directive from “VA officials”, I got a snippy email telling me that the Congressman gets too much email for him to answer them all (despite the fact that they had just answered an unsolicited email from me with a fairly lengthy response). Would I please call the office. So I called the office and got some little weasel intern (who kept reminding me that he is “only an intern” during the course of our discussion) who, despite the bustle in his office which I could clearly hear behind him, couldn’t find anyone to answer my question. Would I please leave my number. Since it’s been my experience that a convenient time for people to call me back is never convenient for me, I said no, I’d call back. And that’s what I’ve been doing this morning.

    Now I was able to get a Veterns Affairs public information person on the phone who assured me that no such directive was ever issued. And after scrolling around the DVA website, I discovered that it’s an invaluable source of information on programs and benefits available to veterans – how these “VA officials” were able to “stop publicizing” their services as long as this website is up is beyond me. And since I’ve been in the system (I have a minor service-connected disability) for 13 years, I’m pretty sure the story is false. Especially since the Congressman’s staff is reluctant to give me a straight answer. But I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    I’ve emailed them again and explained the situation and I even offered to walk the three blocks from my office to their’s to get any hardcopy of evidence that they have to prove that “VA officials” are hiding benefits from veterans. If it’s true, I want the world to know. Wouldn’t you?

    But the truth is probably that Democrats are trying to force a wedge between Republicans and their constituency, even if to force that wedge means telling totally fabricated fairy tales about Republicans. There’s only one way to stop them – the truth. And keep riding them until the truth comes out.

    The actual truth is that President George W. Bush has expanded the budget of the DVA six-fold in the last six years. Not to mention that his father made the DVA an independent agency (severed from the Interior Department) back in 1992. I’ve seen a vast improvement in the DVA’s services on the few times I’ve been to the facilities since this administration took over operations. And I’m pretty sure that anyone stopping by a VA hospital would be impressed by the facilities and the professional staff – many are much better than their civilian counterparts.

    I’ll be updating this entry as the story progresses. So far, Van Hollen hasn’t answered my emails and my phone calls get dumped into a voice mail box. But, I want the truth – just like the rest of America wants the truth.

    UPDATE: Well, a legislative staffer sent me this .gif file of a four-year-old memo; my respose to his email;

    Dear Mr. Alperson;
    Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter. The memo you have forwarded to me is more than four years old – before the last Presidential election and three Congressional election cycles old. The lawsuit appears to be that old, too. They all happened before the last several tax cut bills, they also happened when revenues were substantially less than current tax revenues. It was more than a year before the war against Hussein – so you can hardly tie this to our military efforts there or to the tax cuts, for that matter.
    I am a disabled veteran and I’ve noticed a marked increase in the quality of care at our DVA facilities over the last eight years. I’ve also noticed that there has been a marked increase in outreach to veterans. That’s the story here.
    Thank you for your time. Your “evidence” will be included in my update to the article I’ve already posted. 

    I neglected to mention how the document is incomplete, and there’s no signature block so there’s no telling who wrote document although an untitled news article that was included named DVA’s then-Secretary of Operations and Management Laura Miller as the author. I’ll admit he sent me two articles about the lawsuit brought against the VA in 2003. One included a quote from DVA’a then-secretary Anthony Principe that his intent was to divert funding from outreach to treatment.

      

    What with the advancement in internet communications, that seems almost reasonable to me. So I retract my “totally fabricated fairytale” statement. The story seems to have some basis in fact, but there’s no way this event should have an impact on this or any future election. The people have voted since this occurred and was made public.

  • Slavishly supporting the party

    More of my thoughts on Steny Hoyer and Ben Cardin and Hoyer’s idiot comment about Lt Governor Steele “slavishly” supporting the Republican Party issues.

    Steny Hoyer and Ben Cardin both voted 99% with Bill Clinton in the 90s. They both slavishly supported the 1993 tax increase – the same tax increase that raised taxes on the lowest income American families, the dead and Social Security recipients despite the fact that they had promised us middle class tax cuts. The George Bush tax cuts that Lt Governor Steele supports cut taxes on lower income Americans. Some had their marginal rates cut from 15% to 10% – a 33.3% reduction – while others with lower incomes had their tax burden reduced 100%. While Clinton, Cardin and Hoyer raised taxes on the poorest taxpayers, President Bush and Lt Governor Steele support lowering taxes on the poorest American families. And can I mention that unemployment is down, wages are up and tax revenues are up – the whole goal of sound income tax cut program.

    Before the 1993 tax increase, Social Security recipients paid income tax on only 55% of their benefit (since they’d already paid income tax on the money when they earned it). Clinton, Cardin and Hoyer raised that from 55% to 85% – a more than 50% increase on taxable income in one year. And those elderly people who had died in 1993 before Clinton, Cardin and Hoyer passed the increase, had their survivors burdened with the tax increase because Clinton, Cardin and Hoyer made it retroactive to the first of the year. Yeah, Clinton, Cardin and Hoyer really care a lot about the “working men and women” of Maryland.

    They both slavisly supported the 1994 Hillary Healthcare take over of 1/7th of our economy – which everyone can now agree would have devastated our economy like the same imbecility has wracked the economies of Old Europe. In fact, Ben Cardin in his campaign ads claims to be an expert on socialized medicine – if he is an expert, why does he still support socialized healthcare for Americans. An expert would look at the failure of the system in Canada and Europe and say it’s a mistake. I don’t know why he considers himself an expert – unless he’s counting all of his votes over the last 30 years for socialized medicine as some sort of expertise on the subject. And what does Hoyer know – he’s been a politician since he was 27 years old in 1966. All he knows how to do is fool people. (Can I ask at this point, what kind of woodchuck name is Steny Hoyer – it sounds like some species of endangered field mouse).

    Oh, what was the 1% of the times Cardin and Hoyer didn’t vote with Clinton? It was welfare reform that Clinton had be dragged kicking and scream into by House Republicans weeks before the 1996 election – the only campaign promise Clinton kept from the 1992 election. The only Clinton program that worked (and I’ll remind the reader that Clinton promised his Democrat base that he’d reform the reform – another promise he never kept, even though not tinkering with it was the best thing he could have done).

    And what has the Democrats done to those who don’t “slavishly” support the party? Well, Joe Lieberman is clawing his way back into a seat that had been securely his just a few years ago.

    Or James Traficant “mouldering” in jail after being thrown overboard by Democrats because of his criticism of Democrats in Congress and President Clinton. Don’t get me wrong, he probably deserves to be in jail, but look how Democrats have protected loyal Lousiana Democrat William Jefferson with 90 grand in his fridge. Zell Miller couldn’t get a job mopping floors at the DNC after supporting George W. Bush in the last election. Lovable old Ed Koch is a pariah among Democrats after supporting the war against terror and Rudy Giuliani. How many Hollywood Democrats are ostracized now because of their support of this administration?

    So tell me, who is slavishly supporting whom? And who treats their members like slaves?

    Not slavishly supporting Democrats this week are Don King, Russell Simmons and Mike Tyson.

  • Hoyer apologizes to Steele

    Steny Hoyer was forced to apologize to Michael Steele last night for the ill-considered remark that Lt. Governor Steele has made “a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party.” In light of the Democrats pounding Senator Allen (R-VA) for his “macaca” gaffe, where is the outrage from the media over this REALLY racist remark?

    I spoke to Mr Steele’s campaign manager this morning at one of the Lt Governor’s campaign stops (who by the way, turned me on to the Hoyer apology before it showed up on Drudge). He told me that Ben Cardin is running against President Bush (as I said here) while the Washington Democrats are doing the heavy lifting for the Cardin campaign against Mr. Steele. This should really anger Maryland voters that outsiders are trying to choose our representation in the Senate.

    I lucked out and got a chance to meet Mr. Steele this morning and let him know he’s got my support. I’m sure he’ll sleep well tonight.

    I’m not really that short – he’s just that tall.

    And while we’re on the subject of “slavishly” supporting a political party, what happened to Joe Lieberman when he didn’t “slavishly” support the Democrat Party on every single issue?

    In fact, the ad that little Chuckie Schumer is running against Michael Steele makes the comment that Mr Steele “loves puppies, but he REALLY LOVES GEORGE BUSH” because Mr Steele agrees with the President on four issues; the war in Iraq, stem cell research, tax cuts and he’s anti-abortion. That’s four issues out of how many?

    And guess what, Schumer, so does a large majority of Americans – just not the ones who “slavishly” support Democrat Party issues.

  • Fat chance, Joe

    Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) warns Democrats that if they get Congress back, they need to change their ways. It ain’t gonna happen, Joe. They’ve lost every election since 1996, they haven’t had 51% of the popular vote in a Presidential election since 1976. They’re out of touch with America. Democrats have forged a diverse, loose alliance from the fringe of American society and they’ve demanded that we accept them.   

    Democrats don’t understand that it’s their message that keeps losing – they think they’ve been cheated and they act like a group of spoiled rich, children. No one should know this better than Lieberman. He abandoned his own principles to run as their Vice Presidential candidate. He toed the Party Line – and look where it got him. public domain He’s nearly a bigger boogeyman to Democrats than the President. They tried to squelch their most loyal member by ending his career because he put National Security before partisan politics.

    They’ve already decided that their thirst for power is greater than their own security, that their empty political message is more important than the lives of the troops who provide our national security. What makes Joe think that a few feeble words from him will change the Democrat Party into an American party again?