Did gun rights “snooker” Democrats?

Via Weasel Zippers

Via Washington Times:

A prominent gun-rights advocate claims his group’s staff was in the room during the drafting of the recently unveiled proposal to expand gun-purchase background checks and said that “we snookered the other side — they haven’t figured it out yet.”

Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, made the remarks at a speech in Portland, Ore., on Friday, according to video captured by the group Daylight Disinfectant.

Mr. Gottlieb said that despite claims to the contrary, the amendment that would expand checks to sales online and at gun shows is “not registration” and went on to list a host of gun-rights protections in the measure, such as allowing interstate handgun sales for dealers and protections for veterans, for example.

“It’s a Christmas tree,” Mr. Gottlieb said. “We just hung a million ornaments on it.”

“We’re taking the background check and making it a pro-gun bill,” he added. “Unfortunately, some of my colleagues haven’t quite figured it out yet because they weren’t sitting in the room writing it,” he continued. “My staff was. I’ll be perfectly candid about it. This will probably break on Monday in the Wall Street Journal.”

Well, we shall see. Maybe the GOP has finally outwitted the Democrats, for once. But, why announce it? why start crowing about is already? 

 

Political has been heart broken Congress did not pass gun control after Newtown

Ah Peggy Noonan, who continues to get air time even though she is well past relevant

On this weekend’s broadcast of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist Peggy Noonan said Congress has betrayed the public trust after the Newtown, Conn. elementary school massacre.

“I think a big part of this story is that people don’t trust Congress,” Noonan said. “After Newtown, there was a great bubbling feeling of, my goodness, there must be at least some things we can do legislatively to make this whole gun situation better. If the Congress, if the Senate had moved quickly on discrete, small bills having to do with background checks — I mean quickly, in the weeks after Newtown … They failed to move quick and small.”

I wonder what “small” gun grabbing bills Noonan would ask for. She mentions background checks, which we already have. Maybe she thinks the feds should stick their nose into every private gun sale? Such a bill would hurt the law-abiding and do nothing to stop criminals.

Not to mention that Congress really should NOT “move fast”. Thomas Jefferson certainly would not be a fan of that. Bills passed quickly are antithetical to liberty and open government. Frankly bills ought to take a long time, so the people can know what is in them and have their say.

Al Gore sells Current TV to al-Jazeera UPDATED! Al Gore does not pay his fair share!

I think they paid five dollars for it, but the price isn’t the issue, the ideology is. We all know al-Jazeera is heavily biased, and apparently, Al Gore found their ideology similar to his

Before pan-Arab broadcaster al-Jazeera bought Current TV, the fledgling cable news network founded by former Vice President Al Gore, conservative commentator Glenn Beck had pursued purchasing the company — and was rejected.

The Wall Street Journal revealed that when Beck’s TheBlaze TV sought ownership of the Current broadcasting network, the bid was rejected because the principles of Beck’s company did not align with those of Current.

“Other suitors who didn’t share Current’s ideology were rebuffed,” reporters Keach Hagey and John Jannarone wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze approached Current about buying the channel last year, but was told that ‘the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view,’” according to a person familiar with the negotiations.” 

The former vice president confirmed the sale Wednesday that reportedly netted $500 million, saying in a statement that Al-Jazeera shares Current TV’s mission “to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.”

In other words, Gore is a Leftist, and that makes him far closer to a “news” outfit that carries water for terrorists than to American Conservatives. The mask slips a little more, revealing what the American Left really is.

UPDATE!! I guess Joe Biden might call Al Gore unpatriotic!

Liberal hypocrisy, thy name is Al:

Al Jazeera did not disclose the purchase price, but people with direct knowledge of the deal pegged it at around $500 million, indicating a $100 million payout for Mr. Gore, who owned 20 percent of Current. Mr. Gore and his partners were eager to complete the deal by Dec. 31, lest it be subject to higher tax rates that took effect on Jan. 1 . . .

Waiting for Team Obama to label Gore as greedy, and waiting, and waiting, and…….

 

Of course not everyone hates Piers Morgan!

Stacy McCain opines today that everyone hates Piers Morgan

The petition to deport Piers Morgan is now nearing 90,000 signatures— which is what I’d call “a gpod start” — and this groundswell of antipathy to being lectured by a smarmy Brit on CNN has now reached America’s youth, including Michael Butler at The High School Conservative:

Piers Morgan “has a case of the sads” over the deportation petition, tweeting things such as “Ironic U.S. gun rights campaign to deport me for ‘attacking 2nd amendment rights’ – is my opinion not protected under 1st amendment rights?” One witty twitter user responded with “You ignore the Constitution, why shouldn’t they?” For those of you wondering if we really can deport Piers Morgan for being stupid, we can. James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal explains, “Your opinion is protected, your presence in the U.S. is not. See Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972).” . . .
There is also a response petition from British citizens which reads, “We got rid of him once and why should we have to suffer again. The Americans wanted him so they should put up with him. We washed our hands of him a long time ago.

McCain goes on to suggest we send Piers to France, or Canada. Hmmm, I can see Morgan in a beret, in fact, he sort of looks like he is wearing one when you watch him on CNN, if you are among the 77 people who do. He has that air of arrogance, that air of self-importance, and that accent, which is super hot on a woman (think Julia Ormond, Emma Samms, Kate Beckinsale or Kate Winslet), but on a man? But, to be fair here, not everyone hates Piers, just those that have heard him and his snooty drivel. Poor Piers, he just does not understand that when you start berating people who own guns, and criticizing the Bible, lots of folks will hold it against you. And guess what Piers, that First Amendment you are so worried about? It also grants us, the right to criticize you.

Why do I completely discount anything Peggy Noonan says?

It is not that Peggy is always wrong, it is that she is often wrong, and when she is, she says incredibly inane things like accusing the Tea Party of rage video at Doug Powers who sums up Noonan perfectly

When I look at people at Tea Parties I see folks genuinely concered about the future of the country and the erosion of its founding principles. If that’s “rage” we need more of it, not less. But I have a feeling Peggy Noonan has been to as many Tea Parties as I’ve been to Chomsky lectures:

The biggest thing that Noonan misses is that in 2010, it WAS the Tea Party that won big. Again, Noonan is another establishment Republican who place politics before principles. I think, it is time that we at The DaleyGator create a new award to present to folks like Noonan. We will call it the Horse’s Ass Award! What do you think Peggy?

The DaleyGator is full of rage, just like the Tea Party

 

Multiple requests for additional security in Benghazi denied? UPDATED! Military Intervention Rejected?

 

Via Big Government

Asked about claims that requests for additional security in Benghazi were denied, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to comment, citing an ongoing investigation by the FBI. Nearly three weeks after the attack, FBI agents sent to Libya to investigate have yet to set foot in Benghazi.

In another additional detail not contained in his letter, Issa says there were a total of 13 threats and/or attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi prior to the September 11 attack.

[End update]

The security lapses in Benghazi that led to the death of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans trace back to security decisions made in Washington. That’s the message of a letter Rep. Darrell Issa sent to Secretary Clinton Tuesday. The letter indicates that the US mission in Libya made repeated request for increased security prior to the September 11th attack but that these requests were denied. Issa’s House Oversight committee is planning a hearing on Wednesday, October 10, to investigate the failure.

It just looks worse and worse each time new information is discovered. Now the Wall Street Journal reports this disturbing news

According to the Wall Street Journal, as the attack on the U.S. consulate was raging, Obama took a “wait and see” approach.

Ninety minutes after news of the attack reached Washington, Obama, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, JCS Chair General Martin Dempsey, and a national security adviser convened for an oval office meeting in which they ultimately rejected the course of U.S. military intervention. Instead, they decided to reach out to the Libyan government to ask if they would send reinforcements.

When the U.S. personnel at the consulate left the main building for what was supposed to be a safe house, questions regarding the deployment of forces seemed moot. 

But the battle was still raging, and Ambassador Stevens’ life was close to its end.

Again, we show weakness and it costs us dearly.

 

What is the difference between Swiss Cheese and the Washington Post 5,000 word hit piece on Mitt Romney?

Lots more holes in the Post piece! Stacy McCain has LOTS more. Some GREAT aggregating going on at The Other McCain

Three recent headlines in the URGENT BREAKING SCANDAL:

Source for WaPo’s Romney hit piece:
Actually, I wasn’t present during the prank
– Hot Air

Sister of Alleged Romney Target Has
‘No Knowledge’ of Any Bullying Incident
– ABC News

A question emerges in reading
the Washington Post piece … 
– Daily Caller

Of course, this URGENT BREAKING SCANDAL involves incidents that allegedly happened nearly half a century ago, so those sneaky Republicans have a had a long time to cover it up.

Certainly the latter-day Woodwards and Bernsteins at the Washington Post will have their work cut out for them.

UPDATE: When I say they “have their work cut out for them,” I mean they’re already trying to change their story as it falls apart.

The changes have been noted by so-called “bloggers” like Brian Cates:

Washington Post Caught
Making Sh!t Up Again

Of course, there are no so-called “bloggers” on the Pulitzer Prize committee, which is composed entirely of respected professional journalists like Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Dan Rather . . .

UPDATE II: Dana Loesch wonders why the Washington Post didn’t alert its readers to the changes in its 5,000-word investigative report.Probably because of budget constraints:

The Washington Post Co. reported its first-quarter earnings on Friday, and the news coming out of the newspaper division was mostly grim. The unit lost $22.6 million in the quarter, with revenue down 8% and revenue from print advertising specifically falling 17%.  . . .
[T]he paper has lost top talent lately, including James Grimaldi, who took a buyout and is heading to The Wall Street Journal. With his departure, the Post will have lost all three reporters who won its 2006 Pulitzer for their coverage of the Jack Abramoff scandal. The paper also shut out of the 2012 Pulitzers and weathered a blogger embarrassment that revealed its BlogPost operation to be a mini sweatshop.

The Washington Post can afford to assign a reporter to do a 5,000-word investigative report on a Republican’s high-school activities, but they can’t afford to let their readers know that they’re “making sh!t up” again. Because credibility is kinda expensive . . .

UPDATE III: Reading Ben Shapiro’s examination of the Washington Post story, my brain exploded when this part sunk in:

Sometime in the mid-1990s, David Seed noticed a familiar face at the end of a bar at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
“Hey, you’re John Lauber,” Seed recalled saying at the start of a brief conversation. Seed, also among those who witnessed the Romney-led incident, had gone on to a career as a teacher and principal. Now he had something to get off his chest.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to help in the situation,” he said.
Lauber paused, then responded, “It was horrible.” He went on to explain how frightened he was during the incident, and acknowledged to Seed, “It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.”
Lauber died in 2004, according to his three sisters.

FIRING OFFENSE, period.

By God, you can’t do that in journalism: You cannot base a key element of a story — in this case, the claim that Romney’s bullying left Lauber emotionally traumatized for life — on a quote from the deceased “victim” attributed to him based on an (alleged) private conversation. Lauber isn’t around to verify or dispute the accuracy of Seed’s account, and therefore it is unethical to include the “quotes” that Seed attributes to Lauber.

LOTS, LOTS, LOTS more on this over at Mr. McCain’s blog. Apparently even Morning Joe is skeptical over the timing of this hatchet job, and Jason Horowitz unemployment is paging you

• Pirate’s Cove: Family Of Romney Prank Target Not Real Happy With Washington Post
• The Rio Norte Line: Confirmation – The Washington Post Has No Shame
• Andrew J. Patrick: Mitt Romney’s Bully Story Comes Apart Like Cheap Taffy

Da Tech Guy senses a purposeful distraction. Bryan Preston at PJMediadoesn’t believe the timing of the WaPo article was entirely coincidental:

Horowitz has some explaining to do, and so do his editors. Did he fabricate any part of the story and implant it with Mitt’s school friends? Did he work on the timing of the story’s release with anyone in the Obama campaign?

You can also read what I wrote yesterday

Now, I have no idea as to the veracity of these “witnesses” nor do I have any what actually happened. What I do know, however, is that you have a media that is in the tank for Obama, running a story of massive size, over a high school prank? And one, it must be noted again, that fits in absolutely perfectly with the bullying/Gay marriage stories currently making headlines.

Not to be brash, but it seems pretty obvious that the Post ran this story when they did to hurt Romney, and help Obama. They were sitting on this, until the “right time”.

Ed had more today on the non-story story

It figures! Obama had memo ready to blame military if OBL raid failed

Jim Hoft has the story!

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Sean Hannity tonight that the Obama Administration drafted a memo to protect the president from blame if the mission to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden would have failed. That way Obama could blame the general instead of taking the blame himself. Mukasey wrote about it this week in The Wall Street Journal.

“That was a highly lawyered memo (designed to protect the president politically)… I think there’s going to be more that’s going to be tumbling out about that escapade but so far that memo is enough.“

Yep, it is official, California has become Marxifornia

What a sad state of affairs CalMarxifornia has become. The state’s leadership, and I hate using the word leadership to describe the buffoons in charge in that state, are dead set on taking that formerly  great state into some Orwellian Hell. Smitty looks at the states latest campaign of inanity multi-family housing

Are California’s marijuana dispensaries putting out some great product, or what?

Smart growth on steroids, or the radical densification policy of California, was the subject of my recent commentary in The Wall Street Journal — “California Declares War on Suburbia”. Regional transportation plans in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Los Angeles area and the San Diego area seek to force the vast majority of new residents in future decades into multi-family housing. Under the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction law (Assembly Bill 32) and its companion urban planning law (Senate Bill 375), it will be nearly impossible to build new detached housing. This is despite the fact that 80 percent additions to the housing stock in California’s major metropolitan areas was detached between 2000 and 2010.

Odd isn’t it? Once again we see why Liberalism is an ideology of convenience. Liberals can rail all day and into the night about a “right to privacy”, and then support housing that would just about make privacy, well, impossible.  Maybe that right to privacy only applies to killing the unborn? This is yet another blow to Individualism, which is the one thing the Left loathes above anything else. Smitty sums up what he, and I think is really behind this

My guess is that California’s powers-that-snort have determined that having privacy encourages subversive thoughts of liberty, maturity, and independence among residents. What a failed state.

BINGO! Also from Smitty, if California was a hair style 

Newt was for RomneyCare before he was, well, you know………….

Via Say Anything

You know, the health care reform that was the genesis for Obamacare:

Newt Gingrich voiced enthusiasm for Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health-care plan as recently as five years ago, the same plan he has been denouncing over the last few months as he campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination.

“The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major changes in the American health system,” said an April 2006 newsletter published by Mr. Gingrich’s former consulting company, the Center for Health Transformation.

The two-page “Newt Notes” analysis, found online by The Wall Street Journal even though it no longer appears on the center’s website, continued: “We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100% insurance coverage for all Americans.”

What I, and I think most Conservatives cherish is consistency. Ideological consistency. That is the one quality most often lacking in most politicians, and in this crop of GOP hopefuls. Well, except for two. Rick Santorum, who I doubt is electable, despite my respect for his consistent ideological positions. And, yes, Rick Perry, who is, if people will take a few minutes and listen to him and look at his record, completely electable.

So, there you go Conservatives, you actually have two very steady, consistent candidates. If you ask me, we all have three choices. One, give up, go with Mitt or Newt. Just let the establishment tell us to vote Romney, or support Gingrich, who we know cannot be trusted. that is option one.

Option two is to keep whining about getting some “other” dream candidate who will just woo us and make us all tingly. Until, of course that candidate has their imperfections exposed, and then we can pout and say they are just not exciting enough, or genuine enough, or not “slick” enough, or blah, blah, blah.

Option three? Well, I think the two Ricks offer, as I already said, consistent Conservatism, good character, and maybe best of all, we will not have to wonder when they will flip, or flop. They are who they are. If we want some real change, and not just some modest, dare I say moderate change, then there you go.

Now, I have made my choice in this race very clear. I will not bore anyone with all the reasons I support Perry. I will not go into all the reasons I find Santorum a tad too Socially Conservative for me either. I merely wanted to point out how too many of us are overlooking the thing we said we wanted, CONSISTENCY!

Of Facism and the politics of guitars

It seems that Team Obama is sending a message out to guitar makers, and all U.S. companies. Becareful who you contribute to politically. Bob Belvedere is all over it!

I’m sure by know that most of you have heard of the raid on the Gibson Guitar Company by federal agents [if you haven't, per Stacy McCain, here and here are links to two good background articles from Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, respectively].

Since word first broke last week about the raid, many interesting facts have emerged about the parties involved in this story.

-The Pagan Temple has a good summary, with links, here [Warning: righteous vulgarity]. A highlight:

Still, something else has come to light. While Gibson is being harassed, Martin Guitars, which uses the same kind of woods from the same regions, gets a pass. I guess it helps if your company executives are big Democrat contributors, and it sure as hell don’t hurt that Martin is a union shop. Guess who is not a union shop. That would be Gibson.

He also reports that owners of Gibson Guitars may be subject to fines and confiscation of their axes if they cannot prove that certain woods in their instruments were manufactured before the law went into effect [well...I guess I won't be taking my '62 Gibson-SG with me in public anytime soon].

-Stacy McCain has posted part of the transcript of Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz speaking on KMJ-AM wherein he reveals that the Federales big beef with the company is over non-use of foreign labor in the manufacturing of the woods. So, let me get this straight: despite an official domestic unemployment rate of over nine percent, Barack Hussein Obama and his minions are more concerned with creating jobs in other countries. TOM commentator Vertumne99 is spot-on:

There’s a simple explanation. Barack Obama doesn’t see himself as the president of the United States, but president of the entire world. He’s just trying to get the jobs spread around. It’s not fair that the jobs are all centered in the US, other people need some as well.

The CEO of Gibson contributed to Mike Huckabee in 2008, so, could there be some Chicago style politics at play here? It is, or certainly should be crystal clear by now that Obama and his minions are spiteful, bitter clingers. Clinging to their beloved regulation, big government, big taxes, anti-business, big spending, and patently ANTI-American agenda. We have a president who, amid very high unemployment, is taking actions to HURT rather than help business. Just ask the domestic oil, or coal industries about that!

One final question, can any of you see such action being taken by the Romney, Perry, Bachman, Cain administration? No? I did not think so. Now, understand how important 2012 is.

Your Blog of the Day

Obi’s Sister, who is OK, despite being a Dawg fan, defends Dixie against some Yankee miscreant!

Nothing will rile a Southerner more than some smart-mouth Yankee opening his asinine piehole to degrade and belittle his brothers and sisters in warmer climes. The Recent Unpleasantness was over generations ago, but some just can’t let it go. I was alerted to this high insult earlier this evening by the estimable Mr. McCain, who himself takes great umbrage at the rantings of the afflicted chowderhead, a certain Thomas Geogheganof The Wall Street Journal. This fellow is obviously vying for the dimmest bulb in the box award when he opines thusly on The Glorious South:

Why is Boeing, one of our few real global champions in beefing up exports, moving work on the Dreamliner from a high-skill work force ($28 an hour on average) to a much lower-wage work force ($14 an hour starting wage)? Nothing could be a bigger threat to the economic security of this country.

We should be aghast that Boeing is sending a big fat market signal that it wants a less-skilled, lower-quality work force. . . .

We depend on Boeing to out-compete Airbus, its European rival. But when major firms move South, it is usually a harbinger of quality decline.

Airbus? After your awkward swat at your betters, is Airbus the best you can do? Surely an such elitist, with the superior intellect, no doubt can do better than that. Let’s jump the fence and go sit in the blue lights, shall we? We’ll watch the planes land at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (that means the flights connect to Biloxi and beyond) Airport (the world’s busiest airport, by the way, since 1999, a full one hundred and thirty-four years after The War of Northern Aggression) and watch the planes land. You count the Airbuses and I’ll count the Boeings. Haha. I win, bigtime.

Pay attention, moron. Companies move to the South because of the business friendly climate, lower taxes, better infrastructure, and just face it, Atlanta has the hottest women. More than you can stomach, I suppose.

Really, sir, no one down he-yah gives a da-yam about the demented ravings of a scurrilous carpetbaggah. Your Hah-vahd education serves you ill, sir, seeming that you never learned one bit about real economics. I can only assume that course is now taught at universities in states that actually create jobs, not kill them. Southern states, that is.

Odds are your next President will be a Southerner. I guess that means you’ll move to Canada. Or France.

And she did not even have to go into the quality of SEC football as compared to what they play up yonder either!

Raising Cain in 2012! Herman Cain is heating up

Image via Wikipedia

Stacy McCain tells us that Herman Cain, despite the naysayers, is starting to heat up.

Atlanta businessman Herman Cain’s strong showing in Thursday’s South Carolina GOP presidential debate — winning over a Fox News focus group in a performance that pollster Frank Luntz called “unprecedented” — has given his campaign a sudden boost, Neil King Jr. reports at the Wall Street Journal:

Interview requests are pouring in, along with donations, volunteers and invitations to speak.
On Friday night, several hundred people turned out to hear him in Las Vegas. The same night, he won a Washington state GOP straw poll. On Monday, former UPS president Ron Wallace will host a high-priced fundraiser for Mr. Cain in the suburbs of his hometown, Atlanta. Three hundred are expected to attend.
Long-shot presidential candidates seek one thing in the early stages of a campaign: Traction. Mr. Cain may have just won that.

At Friday’s event in Las Vegas, “Many came to see [Cain] despite not knowing who he was a mere 24 hours earlier,” blogger Mike Chamberlain reported.

Cain’s strong performance also helped boost him into the Iowa Independent‘s GOP 2012 “Power Rankings,” which noted “the energy he has created in Iowa,” and quoted one observer’s remark: “If you could take Donald Trump and remove all the negatives, you end up with Herman Cain.”

Cain is rising, he has substance, and maybe America is finally ready for substance, leadership, and a no BS approach to being a candidate for president. No matter what those “smart” pundits tell you, do not listen, do not settle for less!

Noted publicity whore: Why yes, I would screw the GOP and run as an independent!

Please note that I rarely use the language I am about to use on this blog, but, there ARE times when it just is the right  way to express my feelings. THIS is one of those times! Fuck You Donald Trump!

Gee, this seems so …. familiar:

Donald Trump will “probably” run as an independent candidate for U.S. President in 2012 if he does not receive the Republican party’s nomination, he told the Wall Street Journal in a video interview on Monday. …

“I am very conservative,” said Mr. Trump. “The concern is if I don’t win [the GOP primary] will I run as an independent, and I think the answer is probably yes.” Mr. Trump said he thought he “could possibly win as an independent,” adding, “I’m not doing it for any other reason. I like winning.”

As for foreign policy, Mr. Trump said he is “only interested in Libya if we take the oil,” and that if he were President, “I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take over the oil.” He remains sharply critical of the Chinese, asserting that as President, “I would tell China that you’re either going to shape up, or I’m going to tax you at 25% for all the products you send into this country.”

The only difference between Trump and H. Ross Perot seems to be that Perot was a better businessman. About four minutes into the interview, Kelly Evans hits Trump on his flirtations with bankruptcy over the years. Trump insists that he never filed for bankruptcy, which is true in terms of his personal finances, although Trump came close enough to it.  His businesses were another matter.  Trump’s Taj Mahal casino had to go through bankruptcy, which cost Trump half of the casino.  The Trump Plaza Hotel next went through bankruptcy, which caused him to lose 49% of the hotel and resign from its management.  Two years ago, Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for Chapter 11, and in 2008 his Trump International Tower in Chicago defaulted on a $40 million loan.  In response, Trump blamed the global economic collapse and tried to have it declared an Act of God to relieve himself of responsibility for the default.

Why The Left Lost It

Why The Left Lost It – Wall Street Journal

There has been a great effort this week to come to grips with the American left’s reaction to the Tucson shooting. Paul Krugman of the New York Times and its editorial page, George Packer of the New Yorker, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and others, in varying degrees, have linked the murders to the intensity of opposition to the policies and presidency of Barack Obama. As Mr. Krugman asked in his Monday commentary: “Were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?”

The “you” would be his audience, and the answer is yes, they thought that in these times “something like this” could happen in the United States. Other media commentators, without a microbe of conservatism in their bloodstreams, have rejected this suggestion.

So what was the point? Why attempt the gymnastic logic of asserting that the act of a deranged personality was linked to the tea parties and the American right? Two reasons: Political calculation and personal belief.

The calculation flows from the shock of the midterm elections of November 2010. That was no ordinary election. What voters did has the potential to change the content and direction of the U.S. political system, possibly for a generation.

Only 24 months after Barack Obama’s own historic election and a rising Democratic tide, the country flipped. Not just control of the U.S. House, but deep in the body politic. Republicans now control more state legislative seats than any time since 1928.

What elevated this transfer of power to historic status is that it came atop the birth of a genuine reform movement, the tea parties. Most of the time, election results are the product of complex and changeable sentiments or the candidates’ personalities. What both sides fear most is a genuine movement with focused goals.

The tea party itself got help from history—the arrival of a clarifying event, the sovereign debt crisis of 2010. Simultaneously in the capitals of Europe, California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and elsewhere it was revealed that fiscal commitments made across decades, often for liberally inspired social goals, had put all these states into a condition of effective bankruptcy.

This stark reality unnerved many Americans. The tea partiers’ fiscal concerns were real. Despite that, a progressive Democratic president and congressional leadership spent 2009 and 2010 passing the biggest economic entitlement since 1965 and driving U.S. spending to 25%, or $3.5 trillion, of the nation’s $14 trillion GDP. A public claim of that size hasn’t been seen since World War II.

They expected to take losses in November. What they got instead was Armageddon. Suddenly an authentic reform movement, linked to the Republican Party, whose goal simply is to stop the public spending curve, had come to life. This poses a mortal threat to the financial oxygen in the economic ecosystem that the public wing of the Democratic Party has inhabited all these years.

The stakes for the American left in 2012 couldn’t possibly be higher. If then, and again in 2014, progressives can’t pull toward their candidates some percentage of the independent voters who in November abandoned the Democratic Party, they could be looking in from the outside for as many years as some of them have left to write about politics. A wilderness is a terrible place to be.

Against that grim result, every sentence Messrs. Krugman, Packer, Alter, the Times and the rest have written about Tucson is logical and understandable. What happened in November has to be stopped, by whatever means become available. Available this week was a chance to make some independents wonder if the tea parties, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Jared Loughner are all part of the same dark force.

Who believes this? They do.

The divide between this strain of the American left and its conservative opponents is about more than politics and policy. It goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the “intensity” that exists now between these two competing camps. (The independent laments: “Can’t we all just get along?” Answer: No.)

The Rosetta Stone that explains this tribal divide is Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter’s classic 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Hofstadter’s piece for Harper’s may be unfamiliar to many now, but each writer at the opening of this column knows by rote what Hofstadter’s essay taught generations of young, left-wing intellectuals about conservatism and the right.

After Hofstadter, the American right wasn’t just wrong on policy. Its people were psychologically dangerous and undeserving of holding authority for any public purpose. By this mental geography, the John Birch Society and the tea party are cut from the same backwoods cloth.

“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds,” Hofstadter wrote. “In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority.”

Frank Rich, Oct 17: “Don’t expect the extremism and violence in our politics to subside magically after Election Day—no matter what the results. If Tea Party candidates triumph, they’ll be emboldened. If they lose, the anger and bitterness will grow.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tuesday in the Huffington Post: “Jack’s death forced a national bout of self-examination. In 1964, Americans repudiated the forces of right-wing hatred and violence with an historic landslide in the presidential election between LBJ and Goldwater. For a while, the advocates of right-wing extremism receded from the public forum. Now they have returned with a vengeance—to the broadcast media and to prominent positions in the political landscape.”

This isn’t just political calculation. It is foundational belief.

So, yes, Tucson has indeed been revealing. On to 2012.

Click HERE For Rest Of Story

The Bill Gates Income Tax

The Bill Gates Income Tax – Wall Street Journal

Framed on a wall in my office is a personal letter to me from Bill Gates the elder. “I am a fan of progressive taxation,” he wrote. “I would say our country has prospered from using such a system—even at 70% rates to say nothing of 90%.”

It’s one thing to believe in bad policy. It’s quite another to push it on others. But Mr. Gates Sr.—an accomplished lawyer, now retired—and his illustrious son are now trying to have their way with the people of the state of Washington.

Mr. Gates Sr. has personally contributed $500,000 to promote a statewide proposition on Washington’s November ballot that would impose a brand new 5% tax on individuals earning over $200,000 per year and couples earning over $400,000 per year. An additional 4% surcharge would be levied on individuals and couples earning more than $500,000 and $1 million, respectively.

Along with creating a new income tax on high-income earners, Initiative 1098 would also reduce property, business and occupation taxes. But raising the income tax is the real issue. Doing so would put the state’s economy at risk.

To imagine what such a large soak-the-rich income tax would do to Washington, we need only examine how states with the highest income-tax rates perform relative to their zero-income tax counterparts. Comparing the nine states with the highest tax rates on earned income to the nine states with no income tax shows how high tax rates weaken economic performance.

In the past decade, the nine states with the highest personal income tax rates have seen gross state product increase by 59.8%, personal income grow by 51%, and population increase by 6.1%. The nine states with no personal income tax have seen gross state product increase by 86.3%, personal income grow by 64.1%, and population increase by 15.5%.

It’s striking how the high-tax states have underperformed relative to those with no income tax. Especially noteworthy is how well Washington has performed compared to states with no income tax.

If Washington passes Initiative 1098, it will go from being one of the fastest-growing states in the country to one of the slowest-growing. And passage of I-1098 will only be the beginning. Just look at Ohio, Michigan and California to see that once a state adopts an income tax, there is no end to the number of reasons that such a tax could be extended, expanded and increased.

Over the past 50 years, 11 states have introduced state income taxes exactly as Messrs. Gates and their allies are proposing—and the consequences have been devastating.

The 11 states where income taxes were adopted over the past 50 years are: Connecticut (1991), New Jersey (1976), Ohio (1971), Rhode Island (1971), Pennsylvania (1971), Maine (1969), Illinois (1969), Nebraska (1967), Michigan (1967), Indiana (1963) and West Virginia (1961).

Each and every state that introduced an income tax saw its share of total U.S. output decline. Some of the states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, have become fiscal basket cases. As the nearby chart shows, even West Virginia, which was poor to begin with, got relatively poorer after adopting a state income tax.

Washington’s I-1098 proposes a state income tax with a maximum rate higher than any of those initially adopted by the other 11 states. In one fell swoop, Washington would move from being one of the lowest-tax states in the nation to being one of the top nine highest. It’s economic suicide.

The states that have high income tax rates or have adopted a state income tax over the past 50 years haven’t even gotten the money they hoped for. They haven’t avoided budget crises, nor have they provided better lives for the poor. The ongoing financial travails of California, New Jersey, Ohio, Michigan and New York are cases in point.

Over the past decade, the nine states with the highest tax rates have experienced tax revenue growth of 74%—a full 22% less than the states with no income tax. Washington state has done better than the average of the nine no-tax states. Why on earth would it want to introduce a state income tax when it means less money for state coffers?

What’s true for those states with the highest tax rates is doubly true for the 11 states that have instituted state income taxes over the past half-century. They too have lost huge sums of tax revenue.

A final thought for those who want to punish the rich for their success: As the nearby chart shows, those states with the highest tax rates, and those states that have introduced state income taxes, have seen standards of living (personal income per capita) substantially underperform compared to their no-tax counterparts.

If Mr. Gates Sr. and his son feel so strongly about taxing the rich, they should simply give the state a chunk of their own money and be done with it. Leave the rest of Washington’s taxpayers alone.

Click HERE For Rest Of Story