I read that the IRS is blaming Congress for not acting quickly enough in renewing the Bush tax cuts. Apparently now they are unprepared for itemized filings during this upcoming tax season. This seems odd for two reasons. First, this is a major bureaucracy in charge of collecting money for the government. For them to not be able rollback to a legacy version of their software platform would be unbelievable if it were not a government entity.
What is more interesting about this problem is that the Bush tax cuts extended through calendar year 2010. That’s the year we’re filing for in 2011, so there should not have been any changes in place. It seems very likely the IRS does not know what year it is.
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Once again the United States is closing in on the “Debt Ceiling” which Democrats will no doubt want to raise to a new unprecedented and previously inconceivable level. Didn’t they just do that 6 months ago? How could they spend a trillion dollars that fast? Democrats for ya. So why even bother with a debt ceiling if we just raise it every time we get close? In the NFL they have a salary cap – if the Patriots or Giants want to bring on everyone else’s expensive free agents do we just let them violate the cap? Of course not – that’s how a responsible private enterprise works. But again this is government, where rules are made to be broken.
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The new Republican-controlled House is planning to send up a repeal of Obamacare before the State of the Union. This is a silly and futile act. It’s not good enough for them to do things based solely on principle. Furthermore, all they can really hope to accomplish is to undermine the funding for the law. It amazes me how naïve our side can be. If funding for Obamacare is cut off – whether it be by legislative act or judicial decree - the law still obligates providers of health care to maintain coverage and services. When the money runs out the private sector will be forced under. It’s a catch-22. This plays right into the hands of the single-payer advocates!
We can’t win this now, and I further suggest we can only make things worse by meddling until we get the Presidency back. Can’t Republicans wait 2 years?
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ABC has threatened Republicans over the likely slate of upcoming investigations of the Obama Administration. California Republican Darrell Issa will run the Oversight Committee and has promised to bring Holder and others to task for their overt partisanship and dubious enforcement of the law. In response, a major media network has basically said, “You better not do that or else…” The message is pretty clear – if Republicans dare to expose Obama and his cronies as the partisan villains they are the “Free Press” will skewer them even worse than they already do. I imagine the ABC battle cry will be something like “The Spirit of 1996.” It’s the old trick - if you can’t beat ‘em, lie about ‘em in the press.
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I still have heard nothing about the fate of Bradley Manning. He is a traitor, this should be easy, but it will be anything but. On a related story, Obama says he is all for gays serving in the military, but is still against gay marriage, although he fully supports civil unions. I cannot fathom the depth of his inner turmoil – he must not sleep a wink. Has anyone ever straddled the big throbbing gay issue so precariously? But he has to do it to prolong alienating the few socially-conservative democrats, including Latino Catholics. You might say he knows what side his buns are buttered on.
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Now that Scott Walker is our Governor and he has solid Republican majorities in both houses, why not abolish taxes on business altogether? As conservatives we believe that prosperity is limited by government, and Wisconsin’s reputation as a high-tax state with an overbearing bureaucracy is not doing anyone any favors. It stands to reason that if we can become an ideal state in which to do business by not punishing companies for operating here we can solve our unemployment issue, and by virtue of increase of personal incomes resolve budget issues as well.
Maybe we don’t abolish all taxes on business, but at least be competitive! I have high hopes for Scott Walker – I think we all do. It may be too much to ask, but it would nice if he got a fair chance in Madison.
It occurs to me that the conservative model of nurturing investment and private enterprise is an organic process. There is inherent risk that the investment may not yield results, in which case the lower tax burden translates into diminished returns, but the laws of nature are on our side. The liberal philosophy of demanding fruit from the seed is clearly unsustainable.
Have a prosperous and healthy 2011!
Monday, January 3, 2011
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Iraq Civilain Death Toll Survey Is Ridiculous
There are some staggering numbers out there, proposed and perpetuated by academia, suggesting the United States military has murdered more than a million civilians in Iraq since 2002, or roughly 1 out of every 30 people in that country. The "studies" suggest even this claim to be "conservative", as in, this number is a conservative estimate.
Remember, you can never trust any number given by a liberal! (see previous posts)
The numbers come primarily from two studies by the same group of people, conducted in 2004 and again in 2006. The first study surveyed 988 "households" in 33 "clusters" and found 73 total "violent deaths". The report includes a statistical anomaly, stating that the Fallujah cluster alone accounted for 52 deaths. This aberration was left in the final analysis based on the rationalization that it was "not sufficiently abnormal to warrant total exclusion from the study." So 3 percent of the data accounts for 66% of the results and they don't think that's "sufficiently abnormal"?
This is the sad state of science today.
Oh, but they go on to state that in the Fallujah cluster they visited 52 households and 23 were abandoned. They don't state why they surveyed buildings with no people inside and included that in their results, but do make the absurd speculation that the reason no people lived in those houses was because they were killed by U.S. actions.
Any rational-thinking person would now be completely comfortable dismissing the body counts from these surveys as the worthless speculative work of imbeciles. But wait, there's more.
The same group went back in 2006 and this time expanded their survey to 1849 households in 47 clusters. Again Fallujah data was included, and the results of this study state, "With 95% certainty, that between 426,000 and 794,000 Iraqis had died violent deaths as a consequence of the war." With 95% certainty? Seriously? If anything these results are even more dubious because of the attack on Fallujah carried out by U.S. Forces during that time. Remember that Fallujah was Saddam Hussein's hometown - that's where all the loyalists were concentrated (or scared shitless to rise up against their dictator), so the concentration of resistance was significantly higher there than any place else. I would venture that to use the survey numbers in a different light, 66% of the remaining Saddam regime was in Fallujah. Also remember that the U.S. military went to extraordinary lengths to protect civilians there, taking the unprecedented step of delaying the invasion for several days to allow civilians to leave the city! One could easily suggest, and I do, that ALL deaths in Fallujah should be considered enemy combatants.
That invalidates more than two-thirds of the survey results.
Now ask yourself this: Is 1849 households a sufficient sample? To suggest that the sample is a fair representation of the total population is a grave misstep, and one taken with obvious malice against the United States. Also, the 1849 households comprised 12,801 individuals, which is inconsistent with the birthrate of Iraqi women. The individuals number is inflated by 20%. There are 5.4 million households in Iraq, with 22% rural population underrepresented by the survey.
Finally, the survey inquired how many "violent deaths" were experienced by the household. The decision was made not to use actual hospital statistics because, "Only the innocent go to the hospital." Huh? Ignoring that justification as completely contradictory, the survey team instead simply knocked on "random" doors and asked how many people in the household have died in the last 40 months. Whoever answered the door would tell them a number and they would write it down. So actual data was disregarded in favor of the word of a distressed sliver of a largely un-canvassed population. The final conclusion, extrapolated linearly through 2010, is that, "about 20% of households surveyed had lost at least one member, and estimated that 1.03 million people had died in the war. Without compensating for the conservative biases mentioned above, their data and sample size gave them 95% certainty for a number of deaths between 946,000 and 1.12 million."
And the methodology is beyond question because it is the same methodology used in previous war zones, and it is at least somewhat unlikely that all of the previous studies could also have been flawed. Unless of course the same methodology were used... Round and round we go.
Science!!! (*sarcasm*)
Conservative biases? Right, because what they really want to say is that using their original data and including the Fallujah sample, 285,000 people died in the first 18 months of the war, and a linear extrapolation through the total 117 months of operations would yield a result of 1,852,500 civilian deaths and three times as many wounded, for a staggering and unbelievable total of roughly 7.5 million casualties! Viola - George Bush is worse than Hitler! (That was surprisingly easy.)
But they realize only vegetables or people who read Democrat Underground would believe such an obvious falsehood, so they are forced to stick with their "conservative" estimate of about a million deaths. Meanwhile, other outlets suggest anywhere from 15,000 to 748,000 deaths, a spread so large as to be useless.
Look, I am not suggesting Iraqi civilians have not died during the conflict. Clearly thousands have. But even this survey indicates almost as many civilians were killed by insurgents as by coalition forces, and I suggest that is the only conservative number in the piece. U.S. soldiers are bound by rules of engagement that the enemy is not. How many of our boys have died protecting civilians while the insurgents use them as shields? The people who did the survey cannot risk the truth, so they chose to ignore it and instead report lies to be used in anti-American propaganda. How many more will die because of their actions? Could this survey be considered an act of treason?
The truth is we do not know how many people have died and in most incidents we do not know who is responsible. That is the nature of war. The question is simply at what point do we say we can shed no more American blood? That is the only thing we can control. But believe me, when the United States withdraws its last man, violence in Iraq will continue, and it will be on the hands of the fundamentalists on either side of Islam who will perpetuate it. A functioning government with a respected rule of law and police entity is essential, or whatever the number of unintentional casualties at the hands of the coalition will pale compared to what Islam can do to itself.
Remember, you can never trust any number given by a liberal! (see previous posts)
The numbers come primarily from two studies by the same group of people, conducted in 2004 and again in 2006. The first study surveyed 988 "households" in 33 "clusters" and found 73 total "violent deaths". The report includes a statistical anomaly, stating that the Fallujah cluster alone accounted for 52 deaths. This aberration was left in the final analysis based on the rationalization that it was "not sufficiently abnormal to warrant total exclusion from the study." So 3 percent of the data accounts for 66% of the results and they don't think that's "sufficiently abnormal"?
This is the sad state of science today.
Oh, but they go on to state that in the Fallujah cluster they visited 52 households and 23 were abandoned. They don't state why they surveyed buildings with no people inside and included that in their results, but do make the absurd speculation that the reason no people lived in those houses was because they were killed by U.S. actions.
Any rational-thinking person would now be completely comfortable dismissing the body counts from these surveys as the worthless speculative work of imbeciles. But wait, there's more.
The same group went back in 2006 and this time expanded their survey to 1849 households in 47 clusters. Again Fallujah data was included, and the results of this study state, "With 95% certainty, that between 426,000 and 794,000 Iraqis had died violent deaths as a consequence of the war." With 95% certainty? Seriously? If anything these results are even more dubious because of the attack on Fallujah carried out by U.S. Forces during that time. Remember that Fallujah was Saddam Hussein's hometown - that's where all the loyalists were concentrated (or scared shitless to rise up against their dictator), so the concentration of resistance was significantly higher there than any place else. I would venture that to use the survey numbers in a different light, 66% of the remaining Saddam regime was in Fallujah. Also remember that the U.S. military went to extraordinary lengths to protect civilians there, taking the unprecedented step of delaying the invasion for several days to allow civilians to leave the city! One could easily suggest, and I do, that ALL deaths in Fallujah should be considered enemy combatants.
That invalidates more than two-thirds of the survey results.
Now ask yourself this: Is 1849 households a sufficient sample? To suggest that the sample is a fair representation of the total population is a grave misstep, and one taken with obvious malice against the United States. Also, the 1849 households comprised 12,801 individuals, which is inconsistent with the birthrate of Iraqi women. The individuals number is inflated by 20%. There are 5.4 million households in Iraq, with 22% rural population underrepresented by the survey.
Finally, the survey inquired how many "violent deaths" were experienced by the household. The decision was made not to use actual hospital statistics because, "Only the innocent go to the hospital." Huh? Ignoring that justification as completely contradictory, the survey team instead simply knocked on "random" doors and asked how many people in the household have died in the last 40 months. Whoever answered the door would tell them a number and they would write it down. So actual data was disregarded in favor of the word of a distressed sliver of a largely un-canvassed population. The final conclusion, extrapolated linearly through 2010, is that, "about 20% of households surveyed had lost at least one member, and estimated that 1.03 million people had died in the war. Without compensating for the conservative biases mentioned above, their data and sample size gave them 95% certainty for a number of deaths between 946,000 and 1.12 million."
And the methodology is beyond question because it is the same methodology used in previous war zones, and it is at least somewhat unlikely that all of the previous studies could also have been flawed. Unless of course the same methodology were used... Round and round we go.
Science!!! (*sarcasm*)
Conservative biases? Right, because what they really want to say is that using their original data and including the Fallujah sample, 285,000 people died in the first 18 months of the war, and a linear extrapolation through the total 117 months of operations would yield a result of 1,852,500 civilian deaths and three times as many wounded, for a staggering and unbelievable total of roughly 7.5 million casualties! Viola - George Bush is worse than Hitler! (That was surprisingly easy.)
But they realize only vegetables or people who read Democrat Underground would believe such an obvious falsehood, so they are forced to stick with their "conservative" estimate of about a million deaths. Meanwhile, other outlets suggest anywhere from 15,000 to 748,000 deaths, a spread so large as to be useless.
Look, I am not suggesting Iraqi civilians have not died during the conflict. Clearly thousands have. But even this survey indicates almost as many civilians were killed by insurgents as by coalition forces, and I suggest that is the only conservative number in the piece. U.S. soldiers are bound by rules of engagement that the enemy is not. How many of our boys have died protecting civilians while the insurgents use them as shields? The people who did the survey cannot risk the truth, so they chose to ignore it and instead report lies to be used in anti-American propaganda. How many more will die because of their actions? Could this survey be considered an act of treason?
The truth is we do not know how many people have died and in most incidents we do not know who is responsible. That is the nature of war. The question is simply at what point do we say we can shed no more American blood? That is the only thing we can control. But believe me, when the United States withdraws its last man, violence in Iraq will continue, and it will be on the hands of the fundamentalists on either side of Islam who will perpetuate it. A functioning government with a respected rule of law and police entity is essential, or whatever the number of unintentional casualties at the hands of the coalition will pale compared to what Islam can do to itself.
Friday, December 10, 2010
The Odd Couple
I'm sure I'm not the only one who found the President Clinton event at the White House extremely odd. There was Bill, in all his old-man glory, and I got the strong impression that Obama was just relieved to finally have someone who knew what he was doing running things. Meanwhile, Obama slinked away to a party. Big shocker there. Nobody knows less about governing but more about expensive galas than Bama.
The thing is, I felt relief too. Bill at least understands the art of the deal. Bama is just a complete failure. The office is way too big for him. He's a bad fit.
Did we just watch Barack Obama throw in the towel on his presidency? Is he mailing it in? I wonder.
The thing is, I felt relief too. Bill at least understands the art of the deal. Bama is just a complete failure. The office is way too big for him. He's a bad fit.
Did we just watch Barack Obama throw in the towel on his presidency? Is he mailing it in? I wonder.
Vote Running
The “Dream” Act. Only a liberal could think of amnesty for illegals as a “dream.” But did you know Orrin Hatch was an original sponsor of this bill? He’s opposing it now because his own political future is cloudy as he faces the scrutiny of the Tea Party. He’s come around – that’s the important thing.
It’s a dream for Democrats because Latinos vote for them at a greater rate than even women. The only group more reliably in the bag for Dems is Blacks. Naturally the prospect of creating millions of new votes has the lib leadership all moist. They are especially excited about Texas, where enough illegals reside that could turn that Republican mainstay blue. I mentioned before that Texas already grants in-state status for student illegals, so a large population of Dems’ ideal demographic – young students – is already established there.
I was thinking about what this situation is like in relevant terms. Imagine you are a Mexican. You cross the Rio Grande at El Paso – its ankle deep there – and are met by a border agent. He offers you two choices:
Choice A, you can apply for a student visa, dedicate yourself to succeeding at school for 4 years and when you get your diploma you can apply for a work visa and eventually citizenship. After 6-10 years of keeping your nose clean, working hard and paying taxes you will be granted the trust of the American people and the rights of citizenship that goes with that trust.
Choice B, you can accept this $100, (the face on the bill means nothing to the Mexican) courtesy of the Democrat political party. Every month you remain in the country the Democrat party will give you another $100. For every family member you bring into the country with you the Democrat party will give you an additional $100. In fact, who ever comes with you, as long as you say they are family, will qualify you for another $100. Nobody will check. We would rather you got a job and paid some taxes and stayed out of trouble, but if you don’t we won’t hold it against you. All we want in return is your vote for a Democrat at every opportunity. Do you think you can manage that?
Sound familiar? Seems a lot like drug running to me; cold hard cash for the simple trafficking of drugs, or in this case, votes for Democrats. The more votes you can move the more cash is in it for you, and it’s the easiest thing in the world because the American system of wealth redistribution puts you at the lowest tier by default, so you have the most to gain, and there are no strings. All you need to do is vote Democrat! Just don't question how well that has worked out for Blacks.
Having unveiled the Dream Act for what it really is, I believe Latinos are a double-edged sword for Democrats. On the one hand they want amnesty, so they will vote for Democrats because of that. On the other hand they tend to be Catholic, pro-life, and anti-gay, as evidenced in California last year when their gay marriage ban passed, helped largely by the Latino vote.
What is a liberal to do!
Democrats figure that progressivism will ultimately win out. They will tirelessly wear down resistance with the retread emotional arguments from the dusty playbook. That’s what they think, anyway. I think it is possible the opposite will happen. Once Mexican illegals are citizens, their nature as hard workers and devotion to Christianity may swing them away from the Democrat party. My guess is that will take about 80 years, or roughly the time it takes for the generation that owes their freedom to Democrats today to die off. If you want an argument supporting that thought just think of your grandparents. Mine are still in the bag for Democrats because of FDR.
It’s going to happen. We will soon have an amnesty act. Might as well get it over with and start the clock.
It’s a dream for Democrats because Latinos vote for them at a greater rate than even women. The only group more reliably in the bag for Dems is Blacks. Naturally the prospect of creating millions of new votes has the lib leadership all moist. They are especially excited about Texas, where enough illegals reside that could turn that Republican mainstay blue. I mentioned before that Texas already grants in-state status for student illegals, so a large population of Dems’ ideal demographic – young students – is already established there.
I was thinking about what this situation is like in relevant terms. Imagine you are a Mexican. You cross the Rio Grande at El Paso – its ankle deep there – and are met by a border agent. He offers you two choices:
Choice A, you can apply for a student visa, dedicate yourself to succeeding at school for 4 years and when you get your diploma you can apply for a work visa and eventually citizenship. After 6-10 years of keeping your nose clean, working hard and paying taxes you will be granted the trust of the American people and the rights of citizenship that goes with that trust.
Choice B, you can accept this $100, (the face on the bill means nothing to the Mexican) courtesy of the Democrat political party. Every month you remain in the country the Democrat party will give you another $100. For every family member you bring into the country with you the Democrat party will give you an additional $100. In fact, who ever comes with you, as long as you say they are family, will qualify you for another $100. Nobody will check. We would rather you got a job and paid some taxes and stayed out of trouble, but if you don’t we won’t hold it against you. All we want in return is your vote for a Democrat at every opportunity. Do you think you can manage that?
Sound familiar? Seems a lot like drug running to me; cold hard cash for the simple trafficking of drugs, or in this case, votes for Democrats. The more votes you can move the more cash is in it for you, and it’s the easiest thing in the world because the American system of wealth redistribution puts you at the lowest tier by default, so you have the most to gain, and there are no strings. All you need to do is vote Democrat! Just don't question how well that has worked out for Blacks.
Having unveiled the Dream Act for what it really is, I believe Latinos are a double-edged sword for Democrats. On the one hand they want amnesty, so they will vote for Democrats because of that. On the other hand they tend to be Catholic, pro-life, and anti-gay, as evidenced in California last year when their gay marriage ban passed, helped largely by the Latino vote.
What is a liberal to do!
Democrats figure that progressivism will ultimately win out. They will tirelessly wear down resistance with the retread emotional arguments from the dusty playbook. That’s what they think, anyway. I think it is possible the opposite will happen. Once Mexican illegals are citizens, their nature as hard workers and devotion to Christianity may swing them away from the Democrat party. My guess is that will take about 80 years, or roughly the time it takes for the generation that owes their freedom to Democrats today to die off. If you want an argument supporting that thought just think of your grandparents. Mine are still in the bag for Democrats because of FDR.
It’s going to happen. We will soon have an amnesty act. Might as well get it over with and start the clock.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
The Great Society
There's no need for me to get into this. The epic failure of LBJ's centerpiece has been detailed a hundred times by people far more knowledgeable and intelligent than I. You can find dozens of books online with a simple search on Google or Amazon.
The important point is to tie the indefinite extension of unemployment benefits to what Johnson claimed to want to accomplish. People will not find work as long as government pays them a subsistence wage to remain unemployed.
Ending poverty? Ending unemployment? Government is clearly not the answer, and history has proven it.
The important point is to tie the indefinite extension of unemployment benefits to what Johnson claimed to want to accomplish. People will not find work as long as government pays them a subsistence wage to remain unemployed.
Ending poverty? Ending unemployment? Government is clearly not the answer, and history has proven it.
Let's Make A Deal!
After all that posturing during the election season. After all the nonsense about “D is for Democrat and R is for Reverse” or whatever, and then the ridiculous arbitrary statement that “Tax cuts for the rich are paid for by the middle class,” and, “Tax cuts for the rich will cost $700 Billion.” Well, I guess the democrats don’t really believe that nonsense either, because they signed off on extending President Bush’ tax cuts for all Americans. And good for them – good for us!. Now if only Democrats were “compromising” for the right reason, that being to not further stifle economic growth and try to grow the market for jobs in this country. Unfortunately they intend to make good on their threats. They show no indication of reducing spending to offset the decrease in tax dollars, so the net result will be more debt and more uncertainty, so the economy will remain stagnant.
This is all part of the plan, as demonstrated by two things that happened in conjunction with the extension of the Bush tax cuts. First, Democrats are also going to cut the Social Security tax for one year – not because they intend to reduce benefits, which would actually be a good thing, but because they want to further compound the debt crisis. That’s right, they want that. Second, Democrats have scrapped the previous plan to extend unemployment benefits by 12 weeks and instead extend them an additional 13 months! Naturally this will cost hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when the government is already taking in less than it did before, but it also aligns the next unemployment fight with a very important event:
The Iowa Caucus.
That’s right, in case you forgot, election season started the first Wednesday after the first Monday of last month, and although Bama will probably run through the primaries unopposed this gives Democrats something to grill conservatives on (unopposed in the major media) at the beginning of Primaries season, saturating the airwaves with sappy emotional stories of people who are chronically unemployed. Blah. Blah, blah. So get ready for that nonsense. Meanwhile, don’t expect the President to “compromise” on anything for the rest of his presidency. It is critical to the Democrat strategy to keep the economy stagnant by continuing to spend this country into oblivion. That allows Bama to get in front of the camera and read a message on his teleprompter that goes something like, “We tried it their way, but now we know for sure that tax cuts don’t work…” When in reality the tax cuts do work but our completely inept government has no idea how to implement meaningful reforms that incentivize work instead of joblessness.
Which leads me to my next post: What do we have to show for three generations of incentivizing poverty, i.e. The Great Society!
This is all part of the plan, as demonstrated by two things that happened in conjunction with the extension of the Bush tax cuts. First, Democrats are also going to cut the Social Security tax for one year – not because they intend to reduce benefits, which would actually be a good thing, but because they want to further compound the debt crisis. That’s right, they want that. Second, Democrats have scrapped the previous plan to extend unemployment benefits by 12 weeks and instead extend them an additional 13 months! Naturally this will cost hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when the government is already taking in less than it did before, but it also aligns the next unemployment fight with a very important event:
The Iowa Caucus.
That’s right, in case you forgot, election season started the first Wednesday after the first Monday of last month, and although Bama will probably run through the primaries unopposed this gives Democrats something to grill conservatives on (unopposed in the major media) at the beginning of Primaries season, saturating the airwaves with sappy emotional stories of people who are chronically unemployed. Blah. Blah, blah. So get ready for that nonsense. Meanwhile, don’t expect the President to “compromise” on anything for the rest of his presidency. It is critical to the Democrat strategy to keep the economy stagnant by continuing to spend this country into oblivion. That allows Bama to get in front of the camera and read a message on his teleprompter that goes something like, “We tried it their way, but now we know for sure that tax cuts don’t work…” When in reality the tax cuts do work but our completely inept government has no idea how to implement meaningful reforms that incentivize work instead of joblessness.
Which leads me to my next post: What do we have to show for three generations of incentivizing poverty, i.e. The Great Society!
Down Goes Hillary
Hillary has effectively announced she will not run for President. I wish I could take the credit - my well-timed Bradley Manning post spelled out the nature of her plight better than any other source I've seen - but I'm pretty sure no one reads this blog. My guess is we will continue to see more damaging revelations about Hillary and her complete and total ineffectiveness as a diplomat and bureaucrat come from the Wikileaks site. She's trying to head off some of the embarrassment by letting everyone know now that she has no interest in future public office when in truth she will have so damaged herself that all prospects for future runs for office are dead, dead, dead.
So Wikileaks was good for something.
So Wikileaks was good for something.
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