right-o-rama

Why the great reluctance to use the “T” word?

We have senators accusing our soldiers of abusing women and children in the dead of night.

We have agents within the NSA and/or CIA revealing critical national defense secrets about our intelligence efforts in the war on terror, and we have national newspapers publishing those secrets to the rest of the world.

We have former officials lying about their “confidential” reports on WMD (yellowcake) to the MSM, and a subsequent independent investigation causing no end of distraction to officials how should be focused on winning the war instead of trying to remember in exact detail everything they said to everybody over the previous few years. Under threat of imprisonment.

We have secret leaks of information about where we are detaining our high-value terrorist suspects, and a movement within some in our country to obstruct our government in the due-processing of those thugs.

We have colleges refusing to allow recruiters within shouting distance of campus, and we have veterans discouraging any young volunteers from signing up.

We have “progressive” organizations tying up the courts and administration for information about alleged prison abuses, providing fodder to our enemies.

And finally we have people both powerful and miniscule accusing our government of “illegal domestic spying” when our agents listen in on one end of the call from al Quaida overseas.

Fortunately, despite all this, we are still winning, for win we must.

But, at some point it must be acknowledged the terrible burden that all of these actions are placing upon our government’s interest and obligation to ensure our safety.

Indeed at this point, the damage becomes impossible to overlook.

Bring on the treason charges.

Heard in an O’Reilly interview with a woman who survived the Superdome experience:

“they gave us nothing to eat. only those MRE meals ready to eat and lots and lots of bottles of water, and the MREs was cold. those things were not food, you could not eat those”

Perhaps they would prefer the Club G’itmo lunch menu?

What exactly have the state and local governments done to help the victims? They initially told their forces to focus on finding survivors rather than stopping looting. Then they blame the feds for the lawlessness.

CNN.com - Superdome evacuation descends into chaos - Sep 1, 2005
An angry Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans’ emergency operations, watched the slow exodus from the Superdome and said the Federal Emergency Management Agency response was inadequate. The chaos at the nearby New Orleans Convention Center was considerably more hostile than the Superdome, with few options for refugees to leave the scene.”This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control,” Ebbert said. “We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans.”

Yes, FEMA is generally relied on for the bulk of disaster relief efforts, but the local authorities must also share that burden. Especially the burden of the first response plan.

right-o-rama has undergone a traumatic transition from the world of Microsoft Windows to Mac OS X. the resulting tumult has taken the better part of a month to return to normal, but all is now well.

and we could not be happier with the new Mac environment. well worth the effort.

The news reports and blogs are filled with finger pointing seeking to place blame on bush, big oil and the war in iraq for the current desperate state of lawlessness in New Orleans. Such finger pointing ranging in character from subtle insinuations to egregious manifestos of deranged fantasy stating that: 1) the bush environment policy caused the global warming that caused the hurricane, 2) that the GOP wants the Democrat-leaning populace in N.O. to be thinned out, and of course that there are not enough troops on the ground here because they are fighting a war in Iraq.

The goal of all such arguments seems to be to lay blame on the Bush administration for the current looting, raping and murder in the lawless streets of N.O.

But who is at root really responsible for the looting, raping and murder?

From all reports, black males on the loose travelling in packs. Causing mayhem amongst the already reeling population, many of them minorities of limited means in desparate need of help.

Where is the outrage against these men?

These are not innocent victims of circumstance, but cruel predators. They will be dealt with soon, if not soon enough for all of their victims. Now how will the public deal with their implicit defenders?

Lots of opinions being voiced out there on the Rove thing. Voices from the left and MSM shouting bloody treason, and on the right well… I think they’re having fun watching all of this. Witness this recent blog entry:

ScrappleFace: Rove Resigns Over Ignorance of Plame’s Name

Here’s a more in-depth demolition from NRO today of Krugman’s latest column. Luskin has been making sport of Krugman for awhile now, must be really getting on Krugman’s nerves I imagine.

Krugman Truth Squad: Donald Luskin on Paul Krugman, the Laffer Curve, Tax Cuts, and Rising Tax Receipts

Paul Krugman is up to his usual tricks in his latest opinion column, in which he tries to explain away the recent increases in U.S. tax receipts as mere “blips” as opposed to signs of increased economic activity in response to recent tax cuts.

Here’s his first statement:

It turns out that all of the upside surprise in tax receipts is coming from two sources. One is tax payments from corporations, up both because last year corporate profits grew much more rapidly than the rest of the economy and because the effective tax rate on corporations went up when a temporary tax break, introduced in 2002, expired. Both are one-time events

Our friend Mr. Krugman must be prescient indeed if he can discern that the rise of corporate profits was just a “one time event” last year. I wonder if his investment portfolio is heavily weighted in favor of short-sell positions in anticipation of the reduced profits in the future? In fact the leading economic indicators have been generally supportive of a sustained growth for the future, Krugman should either validate the statement or retract it.

The other source of increased revenue is nonwithheld income taxes - taxes that aren’t deducted from paychecks but are instead paid by people receiving additional, nonsalary income. The bounce in nonwithheld taxes probably reflects mainly capital gains on stocks and real estate, together with bonuses paid in the finance and real estate industries. Again, this revenue boost looks like a temporary blip driven by rising stocks and the housing bubble.

Note the tricky use of the probably qualifier when Krugman attempts to attribute the non-withheld taxes as capital gains on stocks and real-estate? Krugman attempts to argue that these are also temporary blips in tax revenue, and not part of a larger trend. In fact, a very large portion of non-withheld taxes are for estimated tax payments made by small business owners from LLCs or partnerships who are required to make these estimated payments based on projected profits for the coming year. Another large source of non-withheld taxes comes from estimated tax payments by individuals with mid to high incomes that are not fully covered by the standard withholdings schedule.

Thus it is clear that the increase of non-withheld tax reciepts is in fact a very healthy indication that the economy is growing well for small businesses and individuals, something that Krugman is desperately trying to keep you from realizing.

OK, bombing the trains in Spain before the election made sense in a sick twisted kind of way. But bombing London shortly after Blair wins a national election last month, and also while leaders of the most powerful nations in earth are gathered nearby? What on earth were these sickos thinking? Let’s hope this rebounds on them in a big way.

G-8 Meeting’s Focus Shifts to Terrorism - New York Times