Thursday, January 11, 2007
10:20 pm
Daniel J. Summers
Several things are converging at once, and I believe they're related. Tuesday was a busy day, so I'll explain each, and then how they could be.
First, the hard-working 101st Congress started their 4-day work-week, after taking Monday off for the BCS championship game. (They should have taken Tuesday off instead of Monday, so they could sleep in Tuesday morning after the late finish.) This is the now Democrat-controlled House and Senate - the legislative body we'll have to deal with for the next two years.
Second, we have Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), on the heels of his joint letter with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) expressing opposition to increasing troop levels, announced that there will be a symbolic resolution voted on in the Senate next week opposing any escalation in the war in Iraq. (This is in the 4th paragraph under the heading “Dems considering options”.) That link also has a full story on the bill that Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-MA) introduced to require Congressional approval for any troop increases in Iraq. This bill is a clear usurpation of executive power, and will not pass muster - however, its introduction and the accompanying rhetoric sends a message. (Mr. Kennedy also gave a speech at the National Press Club in which he was highly critical of the President and his Iraq policy. While I would love to give his speech the proper fisking it deserves (and may if I have the time), I'll quote one of the more egregious portions here…)
But I do not retreat from the view that Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam. At the critical moment in the war on terrorism, the administration turned away from pursuing Osama bin Laden and made the catastrophic choice instead that has bogged down America in an endless quagmire in Iraq.
(APPLAUSE)
Our misguided resort to war has created much more and much more intense anti-American feeling than Osama bin Laden ever dreamed of. And the sooner we reverse that distressing trend, the better.
I am convinced that John Kerry could have worked with the international community to end that war and bring our troops home with honor.
Third, the first open fighting of the year broke out in Baghdad, where Iraqi forces went after an insurgent stronghold after the insurgents killed over 100 people. The Iraqi forces called for US backup, and together they prevailed, but not after 10-hour firefight.
Are these three things related? If they are, there are two different ways that it could be. The most likely, and the way I believe these are related, is that the militant element in Iraq is emboldened by this new leadership. They hear the rhetoric from our newly-elected leaders, and they sense that the will of the American people may be waning. They feel that if they step up their attacks, and engage in open hostilities, that they will help those in this country who want us to pull out. We've known for a long time that terrorists prefer Democrats - remember Osama bin Laden's tape before the 2004 elections, threatening states that voted for President Bush? If this is what this turns out to be, I pray that we have the will to fight off this renewed zeal on the part of the terrorists.
Another option is that the Congressional Democrats are using the fighting in Iraq as a political issue. (Of course, the media goes right along with them - look at the first paragraph of this story about Sen. Tim Johnson's emergency brain surgery.) The worse the war goes, the better the Democrats look. I think that a lot of them are not realizing what this means. The Democrats have positioned themselves on the wrong side of this issue. If America loses the war, they win - their prognostications of doom and gloom will have been proved to be true, and they can give the rest of us a big “I told you so.” However, if America wins, they lose - and they will only be madder, and more resentful; they will never admit that our nation did the right thing by going into Iraq. Of course, in a way, they've already gotten a small victory; at the beginning, I never would have used the term “if America wins,” it would have been “when America wins.”
Where is the truth? Are these related at all? If they're not directly related, then they are at least mutually beneficial - which should be enough for any of us that love truth and freedom (and don't want the blood of our brothers in arms to have been spilt in vain) to know what side we should be on. Contrary to what Congress seems to think, the American people do not elect and seat 435 "Commander-in-Chief"s every two years - we elect one every four years. For the next two years, there is one Commander in Chief, with a new Secretary of Defense. If the Democrats have ideas for how to win the war, then let them work together with the administration so that we will prevail. If all they have is grandstanding, naysaying, and threats of treasonous proportions, then they need to sit down and shut up.
Why would a patriotic American position themselves so that they are only validated if America loses? The short answer - they wouldn't.
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
10:30 pm
Daniel J. Summers
Here's part 2 of the 3-part series “2006 Year in Review: The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous.” While part 1 dealt with items that are bad on a ridiculous level, there is nothing humorous about these happenings during 2006.
I covered this in depth with my post “Why the Republicans Lost” earlier in the year. Now, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are going to be in control of the legislative branch. While our nation can survive, this does signal the end of many meaningful reforms. Immigration enforcement, strict-constructionist judicial nominees, and meaningful energy reforms are all distant memories. In their place we'll get amnesty for illegal aliens, judicial activists, and economy-crushing minimum wage increases.
The majority of Americans don't seem to understand that the latter is a ploy by union workers, who want raises but are contractually tied to a level above minimum wage. When it goes up, their pay goes up. However, businesses only have money as they collect it from their customers - increased payroll expense will only drive prices higher, at which point the buying power of the new minimum wage is about the same as the buying power of the old. Higher minimum wage levels also reduce the number of entry-level jobs held by students and retirees - I'm really surprised that the same party who panders to seniors and says that everything they want to do is “for the children” is in favor of such a move.
The Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld established that military tribunals could not be used to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This ruling, in effect, gave unlawful combatants official status, and required that they be given access to our justice system. President Bush asked Congress to clarify rules for detainee treatment, leading to what some have dubbed the “Terrorist Bill of Rights.” During debate on this and other bills throughout the year, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and others were adamant about adding “no torture” language into bills. Techniques such as water-boarding (where a person feels like they're drowning, but they really aren't), which had been used to extract intelligence that prevented attacks, were now no longer allowed.
This is a trend that I hope and pray does not continue into 2007. We Americans are gracious to our enemies, sometimes to a fault. But, there comes a point when we need to realize that they are our enemies. When they take up arms against us, when they align themselves with organizations that have, as their stated goals, the destruction of our nation - if we capture you, expect to be made to talk.
Eight Marines have been charged with murder and other charges relating to an incident in the Iraqi town of Haditha. These men were part of a patrol in this city, when their patrol was attacked with an IED (improvised explosive device). After the IED went off, they were also receiving hostile fire from both sides of the street. As their training taught them, they laid down suppressive fire to remove the casualties that they had taken, then launched a counter-offensive to kill the insurgents that had inflicted this attack on them.
Once the shooting had stopped, some of the Iraqis in that town began complaining about the counter-offensive, saying that the people who had been killed were innocent civilians who had nothing to do with the attack. These stories were often contradictory, but that didn't matter to the folks here who never miss a chance to broadcast bad news. The link above is very lengthy (and the other information it links are also lengthy), but it is a detailed analysis as to what happened that day, and how it is being prosecuted. Even an embedded CNN reporter does not believe these allegations.
This is disgraceful, and I hope that the court-martial comes out in favor of these dedicated Marines. “War is hell” isn't just a quip - it's reality.
With current concerns over terrorism, and nukes that Russia can't find, two nations hostile to the United States declared their nuclear capabilities this year. North Korea has been testing missiles (although these tests were, by all accounts, an abject failure) and nuclear warheads. Iran claims that their nuclear capability is only to be used for power. Why do I not trust Iran? Let me count the ways… They are the primary supplier of personnel and weapons for the insurgency in Iraq. They teamed up with Syria to support Hezbollah in their attacks on Israel earlier this year. They hosted a holocaust denial conference. And that was all this year!
All nations have a right to defend themselves. However, when these nations have proved themselves hostile to us and friendly to our enemies, we must demand that they pursue their defense using conventional weapons.
That is certainly not all of the bad things that happened this year, but I believe they are some that will have the most enduring impression on our world and our nation. Next up - the good!
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…)
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.)