Saturday, February 12, 2005
10:30 am
Daniel J. Summers
Sunday's win by the New England Patriots over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX, their 3rd win in the past 4 years, has solidified this team as this millennium's first NFL dynasty. Coach Bill Belichik and quarterback Tom Brady (both off to the NFL's best postseason records) are but two of many outstanding teammates on this well-rounded team. While the first half was a defensive battle, punctuated by very untimely turnovers by both sides, the second half saw the Patriots open up a lead that proved to be insurmountable.
“I don't know what happened,” said Donovan McNabb, quarterback for the Eagles. “We were having a pretty good game. New England is the type of team that likes to open things up early, and when the first half ended 7-7, I thought we had a pretty good shot.” Head Coach Andy Reid spoke up next. “Coming down the stretch, though, we really had it rough. (Patriot Kicker Adam) Vinateri and his “Field Goal for Truth” put us down by 10 points, and that late in the game, it was just something we couldn't overcome.”
While they openly congratulated the Patriots on their win, there are strong feelings among many of the Eagles that the Patriots don't really have a mandate to traipse about the country proclaiming themselves “NFL champions.” “You know, we scored more points against the Patriots than any other team had since February 1st. And, of all the points scored in the game, we scored almost 47% of them,” an unnamed teammate said. Another chimed in, “Really - can they really go around saying ‘We won’ when they only won by 6%? These folks are just arrogant.”
And, while the Eagles are grousing about the closeness of the game, other sections of the country are complaining about being disenfranchised. “You know, this was really a regional game - Boston and Philadelphia are just 300 miles apart! Hopefully we can avoid this disenfranchisement next year. Heck, with us going 2-14 last year, we're trying to make sure the NFL doesn't disenfranchise us,” said Mike Nolan, recently named head coach of the San Francisco 49'ers.
Warren Sapp of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was more direct. “For New England to say they are ‘World Champions’ is ludicrous. Did they play anyone from Canada? Mexico? Europe? I don't think so. These commentators talking ‘dynasty this’ and ‘dynasty that’ are really [torquing] me off.” His tone changed a little when asked about his XXXVII (2003) Super Bowl ring. “Well, you know, we really had a tough season that season. To come in with a new coach, and overcome losses and fines, that meant something. I don't think those goody-two-shoe Patriots have had a dollar of fines in the whole lot of them.”
Is this true? Of course not. The Patriots won fair and square, after a hard-fought contest, and by a slim but adequate margin. No one would dispute their claim to the 2004 NFL Championship. Sadly, similar claims by those in the political arena are true. Think about this the next time you hear a DNC talking head prattling on about “no mandate” for our President. (And, for those of you who think the above just isn't really all that funny - don't worry, I'm not quitting my day job.)
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
9:15 pm
Daniel J. Summers
Ran across this quote today in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web Today (January 26th, 4th item down), written by an editor of a leftward-leaning magazine…
“And if a new Supreme Court overturns affirmative-action laws, Democrats will need to pursue equality in ways that avoid treating whites and blacks differently.”
Ya think? (Maybe that's what they should have pursued to begin with…)
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
11:10 pm
Daniel J. Summers
There is word today from the fight for Fallujah that we have now uncovered a kidnapper's area where they housed, and eventually butchered, innocent civilians. (Story linked here) This is the place we couldn't find back when they were taking what seemed like a hostage a day, in a mostly futile attempt to get nations to pull their troops or businesses out of Iraq.
This makes my blood boil, and I'm tired of skirting the issue. Our pre-election policy on Iraq was driven by what appeared, to the President, to be an unwillingness on some parts of our nation to continue a large push - plus, had he started the Fallujah offensive before the election, he would have been accused of wagging the dog. Thanks to this delay, several people who were not combatants (oil truck drivers, reporters, construction workers) have been kidnapped, their families tortured beyond belief by seeing their loved one on Al-Jazeera, and eventually killed. There has also be a toll we've paid in servicemembers' lives, due to ambushes that have been set up by holdouts in Fallujah.
Those who oppose our troops when they are on the ground are traitors. Debates over what plan to use are valid, but this “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” rhetoric wasn't intended to spark policy debate - it was intended to pander to anti-war and anti-American people here and abroad, while still trying to pander to those who feel that a strong defense is essential to our national security. Now, we find that if we'd just pressed into Fallujah the way we did in Baghdad, no matter what “sacred” landmarks may be there, we would have denied these kidnappers their capability to carry out these dastardly acts.
Whether you're for or against the war - whether you like or don't like President Bush or Secretary Rumsfeld - it is vitally important that, now that we're there, we don't tie our military's hands, especially with partisan political concerns. The only way out of Iraq that will keep us safe is to go through it - anything less will be seen by the terrorists as “the point” up to which we can be pushed, at which point we'll back down. I'm all for “bringing the troops home” - but not in a way where we'd have to send more over in a few years. Fight on!
By the way - they just came on the news and said that Yassir Arafat has died. That's the best news for peace in Israel we've gotten this century. The man was an avowed terrorist who did nothing but foment hate among his people against the rightful occupants of that land. Let's hope that their next leader will put an end to violent groups such as Hezbollah, and denounce rogue terrorists.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
9:25 pm
Daniel J. Summers
John Kerry and John Edwards (“Kedwards” hereafter) are making some significant claims about their plan for this country, and using some pretty strong but rather hackneyed rhetoric to get their point across. The term “demagoguery” is defined as “impassioned appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the populace.” Democrats are renowned for this, from the “New Deal” to Clinton's famous “I feel your pain,” Democrats base a lot of their policies on what they can spin to appeal to emotions, rather than facts. Let's take some of these areas, specifically some of those having to do with economics, and see why, I believe, Kedwards is wrong for America.
Tax Cuts for the Rich
This has been a favorite claim of Democrats for ages, and it shows a basic lack of understanding regarding basic economic principles. The biggest thing that Democrats have wrong is their belief that taxes are the governments, to be “given back” to the people. Taxes are the people's money, given to the government to fund needed programs, such as national defense, highways, etc. Tax cuts are not “giving back,” they are letting people keep more of their money.
Another problem with their rhetoric is that speaking of taxes in dollar amounts is inherently going to sound skewed to someone who isn't paying attention (which, sadly, represents a lot more of our current electorate than we'd like). Imagine that there are two people - one makes $10,000 a year, and the other makes $200,000 a year. In this imaginary world, everyone pays 10% taxes. This means that person A pays $1,000 in taxes a year, and person B pays $20,000. Now, here come the media reports about a budget surplus, and Congress and the President decide to cut taxes by 1%. Person A saves $100, and person B saves $2,000 - in both cases, a 10% reduction in the total amount of taxes they have to pay. If you use Democrat thinking, person B got 95% of the tax cut.
Tax cuts benefit everyone. Those who make more, by virtue of simple mathematics, will receive a larger amount reduction whenever tax rates are lowered. However, these are also people who will use this money to reinvest in our economy, either through business expansion (which leads to more jobs), investments in stocks and bonds (which helps fund the economy), or through charitable donations (which improves the quality of life in local communities).
Another point on tax cuts - sometimes a reduction in the tax rate can actually increase tax income. If done correctly, tax cuts don't have to be “paid for,” they pay for themselves. If a gas station lowers its price for unleaded gasoline by $.02 a gallon, they will more than make up for their $.02 loss with their increase in volume. Taxes work the same way - when the rates are reduced, the economy grows; so, while we all pay less rate-wise, we pay more in real dollars. Everyone wins.
Minimum Wage Increase
Yet another favorite topic, and another place that Democrats don't understand economics. A wage is a negotiated contract between employee and employer. Most often, all negotiating is done on the part of the employee, as an employer would say “Here's a job, and here's the pay - want it?” Very few people are raising families on minimum wage, and in their “average annual minimum-wage salary” statistics, the Democrats are including teens, college students, and spouses who work as secondary wage earners in their household. When the government interferes in business by forcing them to pay their entry-level workers more, what do the businesses do? There are either fewer entry-level jobs, or the products and/or services the company produces begin costing more.
There is one segment of the population who benefits from minimum-wage increases - union members. Many union contracts stipulate their wage in relation to the minimum wage - when it increases, their wages increase as well.
Corporate Tax Loopholes
Again, more cries of how these evil corporations are trying to get out of paying their taxes. And, yet again, this is a place that the Democrats don't just get it. They miss it because, economically, there is no such thing as a “corporate tax”. There is a finite amount of money in this country, and corporations only have money if they extract it from the general public. The most common method is by providing a good or service for which people will give their money. With this money, they have to cover their operating expenses, the cost of the good or service itself, the cost of paying their employees, and what is left is called “profit.” Under the current structure, they also have to pay taxes with that money, which eats into profits. The company sets their price based on a few factors, two of which are desired profit, and the market value of their good or service.
With that, what happens when the government takes more money from the corporation? Who pays that tax? The general public, that's who. Corporate taxes make everything cost more, while giving no benefit to the economy whatsoever. All they do is penalize success.
(Things have been pretty crazy here lately - lots of work and family events, with little free time. I hope to have time to attack some other lines from Kedwards in the next few days.)
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
3:15 pm
Daniel J. Summers
He's at it again. The 42nd President of the United States, William Jefferson Blythe (Slick Willie, Bubba) Clinton, has resurfaced to promote his new book. Some folks fault him for not accepting the Sudan's offer to give us Osama bin Laden several years ago. In his defense of himself, he's providing many of us a reminder of just how grating he is to listen to. Did he admit that he had dropped the ball on that particular occasion? (Come on - are you kidding?) Did he adamantly deny this charge? He tried - he said "There was a story, which is factually inaccurate, that the Sudanese offered bin Laden to us. As far as I know, there is not a shred of evidence of that."
That's not a denial, folks; that's an assertion. “Factually inaccurate” means that the story could have the wrong date, or inaccuracies in the timeline - the phrase sounds nice, but it had a different meaning than “substantively inaccurate,” which is how I would describe something like that. (Actually, I probably would have called it a “pack of lies” or something like that…) And to his next phrase - he can't bring himself to say “I didn't do it,” he uses the cop-out “There's not a shred of evidence of that.” (If you'll recall, he's used that phrase before - when speaking of Mark Rich, the fundraising of Charlie Trie (paragraph 3), even when describing his own life. I saw that one person said “The proper way to parse that statement (“There's not a single shred of evidence”) is 'There are many shredded pieces of evidence.'” And, as if that's not a wishy-washy enough statement, he preceded it by saying “as far as I know.” Does this mean he's not sure whether there are shreds of evidence (or maybe even whole pages his staffers missed)?
This is the sort of pedantic double-speak that makes Clinton so dear to his party, and so frustratingly annoying to those not in his party. I would think that someone who was trying to rehabilitate their reputation would start talking straight. Ladies, think about it - if you accused your husband of having an affair with someone, and he said “As far as I know, there's not a shred of evidence that we ever had an affair,” would you be satisfied with that answer? What you would hear is something like “We did, but we covered our tracks really well, I think.” Back when the Godfather (Rush Limbaugh for those in Rio Linda) came into popularity (way back during Bush 41's presidency), one of his most common themes was that “words mean things.” (Sounds like a no-brainer, right?) Through Clinton's use of terms like this, and his creative narrowing of common terms such as is and sex, he harmed the moral fabric of this country immensely.
This mysogynistic, impeached rapist, who was held in contempt of court while seated as this nation's top executive officer, needs to go back into the shadows from where he came. The policy differences some folks have with our current President are nowhere close to Clinton's pattern of personal corruption, abuse of power, and illegal activities. Let's just hope against hope he doesn't become our first “First Gentleman”…