The Right Wing

One quick comment.  If Rudy Guliani and Sarah Palin’s speeches can’t convince you of the danger Barack Obama poses and the qualifications John McCain holds, I have no idea how to get through to you.

Imron Bhatti:
the most obvious answer to your question is simple. over the past decade or so, our economy has continued to grow, but that growth has — for the first time in American history — not been felt among the over 90% families with incomes under 225k. this income stagnation is a clear indicator that the economy is not operating as an ideal free-market should be operating, so govt intervention is necessary. economic growth had been accompanied by rising commodity and infrasturcture-based costs, but the demand-side of the economy has not been able to keep up since incomes have not risen for the vast vast majority of Americans. the American economy will continue to falter unless the demand-side of the American economic equation is bolstered. the buying power of Americans can indeed be increased through tax cuts, but the american people pay the price for those cuts through a road and rail system that is stuck in the 1970s, a horribly broken education system, etc…

if the govt is to continue developing infrastructure, make good on its promise to provide equal access to education, operate war theatres in the middle east, AND provide the bulk of Americans with the wherewithal to participate in our economic system, simple economics dictates that of must increase revenue somehow. the simple solution would be to reverse the bush tax cuts, which lowered taxes on the top 0.1% to lower percentages than reagan did, while this same group (incomes over 9 million/annum) has seen its aggregate income more than double since bill left office.

the previous administration’s wanton spending means that we must seek additional sources of govt revenue. taxing the only group that is currently benefiting from our ever-slowing economic growth makes the most sense. this is not a question of punishing the wealthy; our govt has increased spending while simultaneously cutting revenue — this is simply not sustainable.

Matthew Kowal:

Alright, now that vacation is over and im back at work it’s time for more pearls of wisdom:

1. Americans with incomes under 225K aren’t feeling the growth of the economy: In a word, False. What is your source on that information? The reality is that we live in a capitalist free market economy, where every government intervention in the past has lead to either no effect or negative consequences. As Obama pointed out in his speech, he is from the party of FDR and JFK (which is all he can really claim as he hasn’t accomplished anything else in his life besides being in the senate for 143 days), and this party has initiated certain programs such as food stamps with no success. The simple fact that liberals do not grasp is government intervention does not help anyone, it all goes back to the same saying : give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for life. Where is the motivation to work hard and improve your lifestyle if the government is going to be there to bail you out? Honestly if you told me Obama was going to raise my taxes but he was going to take all that money to help the poor, improve schools, build a functional and fiscally sound national railroad system I would be all for it. The reality is that when taxes are raised the money never goes to those causes. It’s a sad reality, but even if Obama were elected president he can’t control where the new revenue goes. It will be chopped up, divvied up and spent meaninglessly before you know it. The liberal tax and spend method hasn’t worked in the past, why would it work now? The other major problem is that people are not as fiscally responsible as they once were. People today want to have the new car, the 50 inch plasma, the lake house, pets, etc. Saving just isn’t a priority, so when a rainy day comes most American’s don’t have the ability to cover it. Any financial advisor will tell you to live below your means, today it seems like everyone’s goal is to live beyond them.

1b. The National Railroad: Undesirable. In the seventies the Nixon administration was faced a decision to continue to fund growth of the railroads or let it die. In reality a national railroad would never work in this country for the simple reason that Americans would never use it. If you’re traveling from NY to LA you can fly non stop on southwest for 400$. Get there in +/- 5 hours. A train would take well over a day if it were going somewhat direct (which it wouldn’t), and people would be literally trapped on this thing for that whole time. Or you could drive, stop where you want to stop, eat where you want to eat, and sleep where you want to sleep. The cost of fueling an engine to make this trip, maintain this engine, staffing the train, maintaining the railroad for the trip, would result in a number indifferent from the flight. Thus the decision was made to reinvest in the interstate highway’s and keep trains funded by metro areas for commuters. On the topic of the interstate system, it is still the most innovative in the world. Nowhere else in the world can you travel such distances in a relatively short amount of time and not have to worry about food, rest areas, etc.

2. Obama is for raising the inheritance tax, the most flawed of all taxes in our code. Under Obama, the government would get roughly 40% of everything left to you by your parents. So, (God forbid) if your parents die and leave you $200,000 cash and a house valued at $500,000, you would have to give the government all of your cash if you want to keep the house. The reality is that most Americans don’t get that much cash in inheritance and if they are left a house more often than not they must sell the house to pay the inheritance tax on the house. In other words if you are left just a house valued at $200,000 you owe the government $80,000. Obviously the only way you can pay that tax is to sell the house. It is a painful situation made all the worse by the tax and spend regime of liberals.

3. The easiest way to help lower income families is to lower gas prices, and the simple way to do that is to help the oil companies. Currently we force oil companies to spend billions on wind, solar, and ethanol sources of energy. All of these forms are failures compared to coal and natural gas. Why base our energy needs on a source as unpredictable as wind? Here is the truth about alternative energy. One coal based power plant puts out 1000 mega watts of energy, which is enough to power a city like Cincinnati. According to scientific american, if we were to take all of the gas fueled power plants and switch to coal today, gas prices would be under $2.00/gal by years end due to the drop in demand. We are the saudi arabia of coal, and we have the clean coal technology to make this all happen without any adverse effects on the environment. Yet thats not considered alternative forms of fuel, so lets get back to the ones that are.

Windmills: These 30 feet tall eyesores which kill more birds than hunters put out 1.5 megawatts of power per windmill. Keep in mind that a coal based power plant puts out 1000 megawatts, so a windmill puts out about 1/750th the power of a normal power plant. To achieve the power of a traditional coal fueled power plant would require a wind farm 75 miles squared assuming that all windmills are turning at nominal speed and putting out 1.5 megawatts of power. As with all energy you can not store energy that is not used, our battery technology is awful (hence the waste of money that hybrids are)…(seriously I can’t even go a day without having to recharge my iPhone).

Solar: To meet the power output of a 1000 megawatt coal power plant, we would need 34,000 miles squared of solar panels. Oh, and the sun has to be shining on the solar panels 24 hours a day because you can’t store it. You don’t even want to know the costs associated with maintaining these panels either.

Ethanol: The reason our food costs have increased drastically, not the low dollar. Ethanol is 3 times more costly to transport and store, because unlike gasoline it is corrosive. Requiring the oil companies to spend more money to transport and store it.

The Kicker: A month before Al Gore released his much disproven movie An Inconvenient Truth, he had a little known meeting with Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and a few other lesser known democrats and other liberal leaders. He told them to invest highly in alternative energy forms like ethanol, which they all did. Soon after his movie was released democrats passed laws mandating oil companies produce more alternative forms of energy. In other words, they passed laws to make themselves rich. In any other industry we would call that insider trading, which in essence is the true nature of a liberal.

To wrap up the whole alternative energy issues, if there were none gas would be cheaper. Until a reasonable technology comes along to maintain our economy we are stuck with gasoline, but at least we don’t have to rely on foreign oil. We have enough in our own country sustain us for many years if we drill for it…..

For next time:

Barack Obama the elitist.

Barack Obama knows nothing of African Americans.

Sarah Palin has more experience than Barack Obama.

Obama-Biden, one way ticket to failure in 2008.

A great night at the convention.  The speeches by George Bush, Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman were spot on.  Fred’s speech was so energetic and had so many memorable lines you are left wondering where this was during the primary.  As far as Joe Lieberman, he may have just committed political suicide in order to put his country’s welfare over his party affiliation.  That is inspiring.

A last thing, it is just absolutely amazing how far MSNBC has tilted.  There isn’t even an attempt to appear judicial and fair in their reporting.  I believe it was Ron Allen interviewing Newt on the floor after the speeches concluded.  Of course he took a shot at Gov. Palin inferring she was too inexperienced.  Newt quickly shot this down, listing all of her accomplishments and qualifications.  He then asked Allen to explain why Obama was ready to lead and Allen just stuttered, said he wouldn’t argue the case and sent the feed back to Olberman.  What a coward, if you are gonna take a shot at somebody you better be able to argue your case as well.  Andrea Mitchell wasn’t going to be outdone when interviewing Lieberman after his address. Visibly peeved about Lieberman’s speech she spent nearly the entire time continually bashing Palin.  As I continued to check their coverage as the night went on they continually quoted the Washington Post, a known liberal publication second only to the New York Times, in accusing McCain of picking his Vice President nominee Sarah Palin out of a hat.  They claim he just picked her at the last minute without doing any research just because she was a woman and that this clearly shows he has bad judgment.  Am I really supposed to believe that McCain in picking a Vice President didn’t do any research on her? Come on.

Liberals claim to be the party for strong woman with equal opportunity and a fair shake.  But now it is clear, they only support woman if they are democrats.  If you are a Republican woman you deserve no such rights.  Instead you are just an itty bitty woman who doesn’t deserve what she has earned.  Disgusting.

There is an ad out by the group American Issues Project damning Barack Obama for his friendship with Bill Ayers.  The ad is completely truthful and accurate.  Yet due to threats from the Obama campaign news outlets such as Fox and CNN have declined to run the ad.  The Obama campaign has also tried to silence the AIP, a citizen funded and founded group by trying to using the federal government.  They want the Justice Department to prosecute a major AIP donor, a private citizen, for exercising his right to political speech.  Does the silencing of citizenry due to their disagreement and criticism of a government figure sound familiar?  This sort of tactic is reminiscent of the English Monarchy, Communist Russia, Socialist Germany, Fidel Castro, and Red China among others.  This is best said by AIP’s attorney in response to Obama’s attempt to silence free speech.

Finally, Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign has now purchased paid television advertising related to the AIP advertising. Surely, the citizens of America are not in a situation in 2008 where a candidate for President of the United States is permitted to purchase paid advertising on a topic about which a citizens organization, following all applicable laws and regulations, is not allowed to sponsor advertising or if they do will find themselves subject to prosecution by your department. Surely we have not come to a point where the government and its agencies are used to protect presidential candidates from citizens’ speech, essentially destroying the very purpose, meaning and historical essence of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Imron Bhatti: (referencing NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/magazine/24Obamanomics-t.html) good article explaining “obamanomics”… when you look beyond the speeches and rallies you see that Obama has surrounded himself with top economic minds to help him tackle economic issues. his thoroughly liberal eye for income redistribution remains rooted not in big govt programs but in market-oriented fiscal policy tweaks. his philosophy as such is reminiscent of bill’s, but Obama also takes a serious look at the federal tax code - beyond just the income tax - promising the most comprehensive, most critical reevaluation of the tax code since Reagan…

Matthew Kowal: My question would be why does there need to be wealth redistribution?  Why do people in our country feel the need to penalize and punish the rich?  I think the more money you make the more tax you should pay, but it should be the same percentage as everyone else.  Obama prides himself on surrounding himself with the “best and brightest.”  For those of you who haven’t looked into previous Free-Market-Loving, Big-Spending, Fiscally Conservative Wealth Redistributionist Democratic presidents allow me this quick history lesson.  It was used to describe the Ivy-League advisors to JFK during the years liberals like to call “camelot,” and here is their legacy.  They micro-managed the Vietnam war from their desks in Washington ignoring commanders’ advice from the field with disastrous results.  The best and the brightest reemerged during the carter years older but none the wiser.  They appeased the soviets, decimated our intelligence capabilities and our military readiness, gave away the Panama Canal, turned Iran from an ally to the enemy that still troubles us today.  These old fogies reappeared during the Clinton years citing the peace dividend following the collapse of the evil empire.  They again weakened our military that Reagan built back up.  Ignored the threat of terrorism electing to criminalize it instead of financing the military to fight it, thus 9/11.  Their fiscal policies have been an utter catastrophe for America.  Their tax code is one of the single biggest reasons for the failing dollar, would you invest in a country that increases the percentage you are taxed if you are successful?  I will leave you with a short Op-Ed from David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, University of Georgia

Obamanomics 101:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and
the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the
way we pay our taxes, it would go something like thisThe first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. So, that’s what they decided to do.The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed
quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the
owner threw them a curve. “Since you are
all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to
reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.

“Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we
pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected.

They would still drink for free. But what about the
other six men - the paying customers? How could they
divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get
his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But
if they subtracted that from everybody’s share,
then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end
up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner
suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s
bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded
to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ( 22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the
first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the
restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I
only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times
more than I!”

“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should
he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the
breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in
unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system
exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for
drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him.
But when it came time to pay the bill,
they discovered something important. They didn’t
have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen,
journalists and college professors, is
how our tax system works. The people who pay the
highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they
just may not show up anymore. In fact, they
might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is
somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics

University of Georgia

Ladies and gentleman we have a new series starting on the Right Wing!  Excited? So am I.  The title of this new series is Conversations With A Marxist.  This exciting new endeavor chronicles the heated debates between our very own Matthew Kowal and Obamaniac Imron Bhatti.  Both of these men are averagely educated having attended the mediocre and quite liberal University of Iowa while wasting many a night in an alcohol induced blur at a bar named Vito’s.  I urge you all not to worry.  These email debates were conducted in a sober state of mind (no matter how unsound Imron’s comments may sound).  The fact checking is up to you all.  Mr. Kowal, the future of capitalism is riding on you. 

It’s the capitalist vs. the communist, the conservative vs. the liberal, the free-marketeer vs. the socialist, the Reaganite vs. the Marxist! Let the battle begin!

http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/08/06/fool-blog-lets-tax-the-pants-off-of-big-oil.aspx

Above is a link to an excellent article on windfall profit taxes.  In short it explains why anyone with a passing understanding of economics and capitalism would recognize this policy as harmful, unfair, and just plain retarded.  The last President to invoke a windfall profit tax was Jimmy Carter in 1980.  That says enough right there.  A man considered to be the worst President in American history with little to no understanding of economics, foreign, or domestic policy thought windfall profit taxes were an excellent idea.  Now we have a Jimmy Carter clone in Barack Obama pushing for the same thing.  When will people learn, history is readily available to help us learn from mistakes.  Yet we have politicians and their idiot supporters ignoring the lessons taught because yelling at Big Oil sounds good in a speech.  Lastly, doesn’t penalizing people and companies for their success and profits sound a bit anti-capitalist?  The founding idea of capitalism is for companies large and small to be freely able to pursue profit from their work without government control.  We are in America, not Mother Russia, Red China, or WWII Germany.  I thought the fight between socialism and capitalism was settled in this country.  Apparently I was wrong.

http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/World/20080801/1015303.html

If I had money like that I would ship my car around the world all the time.

The great Senator form Illinois, Barack Obama, finally made the trip ’round the world to visit our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. With him are some of the media elite, including the anchors of the big three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). This is senator Obama’s first trip ever, while McCain has been four times. However Obama receives major coverage on all the networks while McCain is barely a footnote, and there is no media bias in this country? If McCain goes to Iraq this summer I expect Katie Couric on the plane with him.

Sadly this bias is so large that most people do not even notice it. The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that the three newscasts by the networks spent roughly 114 minutes covering Obama since June. They spent about 48 minutes covering McCain, who made the rounds of the evening newscasts in satellite interviews last week.

Finally, the biggest news story of the day. Last week Obama wrote an editorial in the New York Times about how he wants to end the war in Iraq and attacked McCain for being a warmonger. Today McCain wrote an editorial responding to Obama’s attack saying that to end the war we need to win the war. McCain’s editorial was denied print by the New York Times citing that McCain should “mirror” Obama. I’ll leave you with McCain’s editorial.

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains. Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Sure, if I were Barack Obama I would probably be a little pissed at the New Yorker too. While I pretty much see Obama exactly how he was portrayed on the magazine cover, I definitely understand the controversy. However, Obama is just a senator. Where was the controversy when the New Yorker had a cover of President Bush as a Nazi or shaking hands with the devil? This my friends is the difference between a Conservative and a Liberal. Liberal’s will complain and demand an apology, a conservative won’t even dignify it with a response. The late Tony Snow almost never responded to a character attack on himself or the President, and that was one of the many things that made him great.