“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me.”  Unfortunately, as adults, we all know that words can actually do a lot of harm.  In many cases, a broken bone would be a lot easier to repair.

If it wasn’t so devastating for our national security, the WikiLeaks fiasco would be truly hysterical.  The Obama administration is absolutely helpless to shut up a second rate computer geek.   In addition to all the damage already done by the release of top secret documents, apparently there is more, much more.  Assange has sent out an encoded insurance doc to be opened in the event something happens to him.  He apparently believes that the information in this special document is so damaging to the Obama administration and other countries that he is impervious to attack.  Some people have speculated that these documents may refer to Guantanamo Bay, the BP oil spill, or Bank of America.  The only thing we know for sure is that the Obama administration has been cowed into submission just by the threat of their release.  

Obviously, Mr. Assange is probably going to learn the error of his ways.  While the Obama administration may be impotent with regard to dealing with this, he has also made some serious enemies who are a lot more capable than the Obama administration.  In particular, Russia does not tend to suffer fools for any significant length of time. 

This should also be a sharp reminder of what is at stake in North Korea and Iran.  North Korea already has a nuclear weapon.  South Korea has threatened to launch air strikes against North Korea if there are any more attacks on South Korea.  But the problem is that if there is a miscalculation, the result could be a nuclear war.  How much risk of setting of a nuclear holocaust is South Korea willing to take?

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, at a minimum they will use it as a tool of extortion.  At what point do their demands become so unacceptable that one is willing to risk nuclear war to stop them?

The Obama administration is terrified by the threat of releasing these documents.  They have clearly allowed great damage to our national security in response to a blatant act of extortion.  When one sees how impotent we are in the face of WikiLeaks, it is hard to have much confidence in our ability to handle a real threat, like nuclear war.    

In addition, has anyone noticed that there has been very little damaging information released with regard to the Bush administration?  Either the Bush administration was a lot more capable of covering things up, or the Obama administration has just provided a lot more raw material.   I am sure progressives were hoping that WikiLeaks would provide a smoking gun proving that George Bush lied about Iraq and WMD to gin up support for an unnecessary war.  Instead most of the documents released so far show that the Bush administration was saying the same thing in private that they were saying in public.  It is the Obama administration that has been caught lying about nearly everything.

Hillary Clinton recently announced that Secretary of State is her last public office.  Perhaps she knows what is on those tapes.

TDM

When I was growing up in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan we used to have a contest we called nipple twisting.  Two guys would stand about two feet apart and start twisting each other’s nipples.  The winner was the last one to give up.  It was frankly stupid and painful and I often wondered who the real winner was and who the real loser was.  Unfortunately this is remarkably similar to what is going on the United States Congress right now with regard to extending the Bush tax cuts.

 Democrats, with the help of the main stream media, are going to say Republicans are willing to increase your taxes so they can give a big tax break to the richest 2% of Americans.  They will say that during a time of huge deficits, we cannot afford to give a big tax break to the rich folks.

Republicans are going to argue that they shouldn’t raise taxes on anyone during a down economy.    Both sides will point at the other and blame them for the huge tax increase coming January1, unless something is done.  If the Republicans do not handle this well, they could easily get the full measure of blame for the resulting disaster.  I can just hear people like Anderson Cooper moaning into the microphone how Republicans were willing to increase the taxes on everyone just so they could pay back their fat cat Republican contributors.  Unfortunately there are a lot of people in the country who are just stupid enough to buy that argument.

We are in the early stages of nipple twisting and both sides think they can handle the pain.  We will soon find out who will blink.  Republicans who anticipate Democrats blinking should be reminded that they rode the progressive horse over the cliff into the worst political defeat in the last 50 years.  This is like playing chicken with someone who is too stupid to realize they could get killed.  Sometimes the most insane person wins.

One thing is certain, if Republicans cave on this, it will be the worst case scenario.  They will look weak and there will be enormous damage to the economy.  On the other hand if they don’t do a better job of getting the message out, they may lose anyway.   I think it is possible that Obama will simply refuse to sign any legislation that includes keeping all the tax cuts in place.   That would be insane, but so was the decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian court in New York.  Republicans should have made these tax cuts permanent years ago when they had a majority in both the House and the Senate.  Now they are reduced to a high stakes nipple twisting contest. 

Right now it looks like the Republicans will win, in spite of themselves.  But never underestimate the Republican’s uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Keep in mind that Meg Whitman was defeated in California because of nanny gate and George Allen was defeated in Virginia because of saying “macaca.”  In addition, waiting for Democrats like Obama, Reid and Pelosi to yield to common sense has never worked in the past.  All three have repeatedly shown a remarkable willingness to remain fully committed to acts of incredible stupidity.

TDM

The following article, from Thomas Sowell in Front Page magazine confirms what I wrote in my last blog.

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/12/02/the-truth-behind-the-tax-cut-lies/print/

I am not aware of a single Republican who seems ready, willing and able to explain this.  How is that possible.  I am really tired of listening to Democrats talk continuously about the high cost of tax cuts and watching Republicans sit there like a deer caught in the headlights saying:  “we shouldn’t raise taxes on anyone.”  If we lose this argument it won’t be because of the merits of our position but rather because our esteemed Republican leadership seems to be incapable of winning the argument.

Clearly the Democrats are much better at training people to stick with their core arguments.  If you watch any Democrat on any news show you know exactly what they are going to say because they give the same answer, almost verbatim, to every question.  Sadly, Republicans seem incapable of responding to this memorized spin.  All a Republican has to do is look the Democrat in the eye and say:  “your ‘theory’ sounds great, but fortunately we don’t have to rely on a theory when the facts are available.  History has shown us time and time again that cutting tax rates on the wealthy does not decrease tax revenue. “   The best way to increase tax revenue is to grow the economy.  Democrats are more focused on redistributing income than they are on growing the economy which increases everyones income.

TDM

Democrats are pretending there is a deal in the works to extend the Bush tax cuts.   Of course what they mean is they want to extend tax cuts only for the middle class.  This is really no compromise at all.  We are about to find out if Republicans got the message from the voters in the mid-term election or not.  I sure hope Republicans don’t roll over and compromise on this as it will be disastrous for the U.S. economy.

 I remain astonished that no one, either Republican or Democrat seems to be able to understand this issue.  All Republicans say if that we can’t raise taxes on anyone during a down economy.  Even Republicans seem to accept the premise that failure to increase taxes on the upper income people will result in a loss of revenue.  They accept the concept that failure to raise taxes results in less revenue.  But the problem is that this is unproven and is probably false.  It is incredibly simple.   It is better to take in 35% of a lot than 39.6% of a little.

This would be like McDonalds losing business because Burger King starts charging a much lower price.  What would McDonalds do?  Would they raise prices even more, because they want more revenue?  If they did that, they would probably end up with even less revenue because they would lose more customers.  But, if they lower prices to compete with Burger King, they might gain more customers and revenue might go up.  It is certainly less likely to decline.  This is really Economics 101.

I prepared the following analysis, which makes this really clear.  I assumed that the total taxable income in the U.S. is about $1 trillion and that the top bracket represents 25% of tax revenue or $250,000,000.  (That is pretty accurate).  I then took the $250 billion of tax revenue from the top 1% and divided it by .35 to come up with an estimate of the current taxable income for the top 1%.  The result was an estimate that current taxable income for the top 1% of wage earners is about $714,000,000.

Let’s assume that taxes are increased from 35% to 39.6% for the top 1% of wage earners, but as a result the economy declines by another 1%.  Taxable income for top bracket decreases from $714,000,000 to $706,860,000.  At the increased tax rates of 39.6% tax revenues increase from $250,000,000 to $279,916,560.

But, if the tax rate is left at 35% and the economy grows by 1%, tax revenue increases even more.  Taxable income for the top bracket increases from $714,000,000 to $721,140,000.  Even at a 35% tax rate, taxable revenue increases from $250,000,000 to $281,244,000. 

In other words tax revenues go up faster from a recovering economy than they do from an increase in taxes. 

If we change the percentages, the difference is even more dramatic.   For example let’s assume that the economy declines 4% if taxes are increased and the economy increases by 4% if the tax bracket remains the same.  If the economy declines 4%, the taxable income for the top 1% will decrease from $714,000,000 to $685,440,000.  There will still be an increase in tax revenue, but only from $250,000,000 to $271,434,240.  On the other hand, if the economy takes off and grows by 4% there will be a much larger increase in tax revenues.  Then taxable income for the top 1% will increase from $714,000,000 to $742,560,000 and tax revenue will increase from $250,000,000 to $289,598,400.

Obviously, the quickest way to increase tax revenue is to increase taxable income, not tax rates.  There have been several cases where raising tax rates resulted in a reduction in taxable revenue.  That is exactly what happened when New Jersey passed a millionaire’s tax.  Millionaire’s just moved, and the state got less money.  This is because the more rich people are taxed; the more likely they are to hide income.   This theory is consistent with the tax revenues following the Bush tax cuts.  The top 1% of wage earners paid a higher percentage of total tax revenue after the tax cuts than they did before.

In addition there is a huge difference between the way the top 1% spend additional money and the way the middle class spends additional money.  When lower income people get more money, they tend to spend in on food or clothing.  But higher wage earners are much more likely to spend additional money on investments.  After all, they are already rich, so they usually don’t need to spend more money on food or clothing.  The things they do spend money on are the things that drive the economy..

It’s too bad that, so far, no politician in either party seems to understand the obvious.

TDM

President Obama is now officially the worst President in the History of the United States.  The real problem with the WikiLeaks scandal is that the incompetence of this administration is too obvious to be ignored by anyone.  The original WikiLeaks disaster was bad enough, but the administration did nothing because they thought it would only embarrass George W. Bush.  The Obama administration didn’t even pursue criminal charges even though the original release did significant damage to our intelligence community.  Now there has been another whole group of documents released and the damage is international and overwhelming.  The Obama administration has proven to the world that it simply cannot be trusted.  The real damage is not the embarrassing disclosures, which are bad enough, but rather the failure of the Obama administration to protect the security of these communications.  How on earth is any nation on this earth going to trust the Obama administration after this?  If you cannot protect your own top secret communications, you can’t protect anything.

What makes this particularly appalling is that it was totally preventable.  The Obama administration knew of the leak and did nothing about it.  It appears they were more concerned about political correctness than they were about national security.   Even the Swedes tried to help us out here when they arrested Julian Assange in September on an alleged rape charge.  Hello!!! Anybody home?  Here was an opportunity to solve the problem quickly and painlessly.  Instead the Obama administration ignored the opportunity and just let Assange get released to do even more damage.  It was an unforgiveable act of incompetence..

I suspect that no other President, including weak ones like Carter and Clinton, would have allowed this to happen on their watch.  We may have never learned how they solved the problem, but they would have solved it.   Quite simply the President had a duty to do whatever it took to prevent this new leak from happening.   The President of the United States has a non-delegable duty to protect the country.  Obama failed to do his duty. 

The equivalent to this would have been if the Christmas day bomber had been released and allowed to get on an aircraft with another underwear bomb so he could try again, only successfully.  The Obama administration knew this problem existed, they knew who was responsible and they did nothing.  Are we to pretend that the Obama administration lacked sufficient resources to solve this problem?   Please!  Obama is guilty of dereliction of duty on a scale unprecedented in the history of this country.   Now we are about to find out if our congress is ready, willing and able to do its’ duty. 

TDM

Democrats are celebrating the felony conviction of Tom Delay.  But this verdict may ultimately have more negative impact on Democrats than they expect.  It is important to understand what Tom Delay did to put this in perspective.   In Texas, corporate business is prohibited from donating to specific candidates.  So, Delay collected funds from corporate business owners for his political pact.  He made a donation to the Republican National Committee.  The Republican National Committee donated money to Republican candidates that Delay supported.  This really made Democrats mad, primarily because Delay was extremely successful in getting Republicans elected to the Texas legislature.  In fact, one suspects that the jury was largely democratic, because during the trial prosecutors constantly accused Delay of manipulating the redistricting to get Republicans elected.  That gave Republicans control of re-districting and helped increase the Republican majority in congress.  The major crime that Tom Delay committed, in the eyes of the prosecutor, was getting Republicans elected.

 The problem for Democrats is that they have done the exact same thing, only worse, all over the country.  Tom Delay is hardly the only one to move some funds around.  There have been reports of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama receiving contributions from overseas sources and transferring those funds to legitimate sources.  If these reports are true, Delay may look like an amateur compared to the fat cat Democratic machine.  If tracking the source of contributions is going to result in felony convictions that I would guess a lot of high ranking Democrats should be more than a little nervous.

 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703678404575636942232850932.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

 There has been a long history of prosecutors gaining recognition by taking on high profile cases.  That is how Rudi Giuliani built his resume.  There are prosecutors all over the country who have been watching this case with great interest.  Right now Democrats are thrilled that Delay has a felony conviction.  But in the end, they could reap the whirlwind if prosecutors start investigation similar political gimmicks by Democrats.

 TDM

The latest and greatest is that Nancy Pelosi will soon be back to traveling Commercial.  She will still be traveling first class, at our expense, but it’s a start.  The TSA recently announced that high government officials, like say Nancy Pelosi, won’t have to go through the full body scan or be subject to groping.  I am not sure if this was done to appease Nancy or if this was a request from the TSA agents.  Perhaps they wanted hazardous duty pay for having to see Nancy naked.

North Korean lobbed a few shells into South Korean and got everything it wanted.  Obama is outraged.  I am sure the North Korean’s are terrified.  Jimmy Carter blames the whole thing on our failure to show North Korean sufficient respect.  Joe Biden is trying to figure out where Korea is located.   Michelle Obama is checking out potential 5 star resorts to visit.   In the meantime North Korea is like the little kid in a big car that thumbs his nose at you because he knows you can’t hurt him.  They have this nuclear weapon and they know that no one is going to risk getting them angry enough to set it off.   

24 million viewers tuned in to watch Bristol Palin get eliminated on Dancing with the Stars.  The Hollywood elite breathed a big sigh of relief that the show was spared the ultimate humiliation, when Jennifer Gray used her thirty years of experience to beat a complete novice.  Once again Palin paranoia raised its’ ugly head and one guy in Wisconsin even shot his TV because he didn’t like Bristol Palin’s dancing.   In the meantime it appears Bristol pocketed a cool $245,000, which ain’t bad for a 19 year old single mom with zero dance experience.   Expecting Bristol Palin to compete with Jennifer Gray was like expecting the other contestants to compete with Kirk Warner in a football toss contest.  Which would be more impressive, Kirk Warner throwing it about 60 years with little effort, or one of the other contestants with no prior NFL experience throwing a 30 yard spiral?  Exactly!

Did you know that domestic turkeys are incredibly stupid?  I will never forget watching a broadcast from a turkey farm in Wisconsin where the farmer disclosed that domestic turkeys are literally too stupid to get out of the rain.  Kind of like Democrats after the mid-term elections.

Finally, the following link has some funny “Turkey Puns”

GOBBLE GOBBLE

http://www.saskschools.ca/~gregory/thanks/turkey.html

TDM

I have now decided that the initials TSA does not really stand for the Transportation Safety Authority, but rather “The Stupid Agency.”

All out efforts to solve a problem based on an assumption that is clearly not true always leads to disaster.  This has been repeated many times throughout human history.  Perhaps the most devastating example was with yellow fever.  For many years, doctors firmly believed in the miasma theory of disease.  Basically this theory was that disease was spread by bad air.  The theory was that decaying materials would contaminate the air and make people sick.    Since people living near swamps frequently got yellow fever, the bad swamp vapors were often blamed.  But, the miasma theory was wrong.

In 1850 an American doctor, Josiah Nott wrote a medical article proposing that yellow fever was probably spread by mosquitoes.  His work was ignored.  In 1881, a Cuban doctor, Carlos Finley not only verified that yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes, he figured out which specific mosquito was the culprit.  He was also ignored.   Yellow fever had killed thousands of French workers trying to build the canal.  It also killed a lot of American troops during the Spanish-American War.  An Army doctor, Walter Reed, was sent to CUBA to find out what caused yellow fever.  He read the works of Carlos Finley.  He did not believe him, but after nothing else worked, he decided to conduct an experiment to find out for sure.    He paid people $100 to allow themselves to get bitten by mosquitoes that had previously bitten a yellow fever patient.  Obviously, they didn’t buy the mosquito theory either.  One of the people bitten was a doctor, Jesse William Lazear.  He may or may not have allowed himself to be deliberately bitten by a mosquito.  Soon, just about everyone bitten by the mosquitoes died a horrible death.   It became obvious that Nott and Finley were right, mosquitoes did spread yellow fever.  Dr. Reed published his findings and Dr. William Gorgas read them and believed in the results.  Dr. Gorgas was assigned to manage the medical situation at the Panama Canal, and he went to war against the mosquitoes.   It worked, which is why the Panama Canal exists today.

Today we have another example of people making decision based on assumptions that are clearly not true.   We have a serious problem with suicide bombers who dream of going to paradise along with a plane load of innocent people.  So far, all of the recent attempts have been made by young Muslim males.  There seems to be a severe shortage of other people willing to blow themselves up.  I have met some really stupid people who could be talked into doing some dumb things, but I don’t know of anyone who could have been convinced to setting off a bomb built into his underwear.  If one did believe in the 100 virgin theory, it would still seem logical to want to arrive in paradise with critical equipment still functioning.   

 At some point in the future we may face some unexpected risk from families on vacation,  outraged nuns or white grandmothers on a mission, but so far it’s pretty much been a jihad thing.  So it would seem obvious that focusing on a Muslim male, traveling on a one way ticket, paid in cash by someone else and having no baggage would have some merit.   That is exactly what happened with the “Christmas bomber” but the airport screeners were too busy patting down everyone else on the flight to notice.  They didn’t even notice that this guy was on a no-fly list until just before the plane landed.  Nice!  The only thing that prevented disaster was an alert passenger who became suspicious when this guy set his underpants on fire.   Once again the disaster was only avoided by the good fortune of being attacked by an incompetence terrorist.

The new TSA regulation are more than annoying, they are downright evasive.  But that is not the biggest problem.  The real concern is that trying to search everyone distracts the airport screeners from paying enough attention to those people who clearly are a threat.  It is like the French at the Panama Canal.  They spent a lot of time trying to deal with swamp vapors, when they should have concentrated on killing mosquitoes.  The French even put little saucers of water under the legs of their beds, providing a very convenient place for mosquitoes to breed in close proximity to their preferred food source.  In fact, they didn’t even need to kill all the mosquitoes, just the one specific breed that likes to carry around the yellow fever virus.   Until they figured that out they spend a lot of money, killed a lot of innocent people and made zero progress toward fixing the problem.  Actually, the French never figured it out, which is why the Panama Canal zone was built by the U.S.  Remarkably similar to what is happening at the TSA today. 

Any policy, based on an assumption that is not true, is doomed to failure.  That is why the TSA is really “The Stupid Agency.”  What makes this worse is that if someone other than a Muslim male is likely to be a serious threat, it is likely to be a Muslim female coerced into doing it by a Muslim male.  Yet the TSA has already adapted rules to avoid offending Muslim females wearing a head scarf by letting them “pat themselves down.”   That may seem like a dumb idea to some people who do not understand the importance of political correctness. 

TDM

Sarah Palin has perfected the art of annoying liberals.   This is particularly true of liberal women.  They have dreamed of having a woman in power for decades, but Sarah Palin does not begin to resemble that image.  They want a brilliant, Harvard or Yale graduate, pro-choice woman to lead the way with their progressive agenda.  They might tolerate a Republican, but only if she meets their standards.  Sarah Palin not only doesn’t fit the mold, she despises the mold.  She didn’t attend Yale or Harvard, she attended Hawaii Pacific, North Idaho and the University of Idaho.  She is not a lawyer, she has a degree in communications.  She doesn’t use liberal speak when she talks and she has this high squeaky, annoying voice that just sounds wrong.  She says things like you “betcha,” and even winks occasionally to make it even worse. Then to top it off she is a housewife with five children who chose to have a down’s syndrome baby rather than have an abortion.   Even Republican women despise her as being unworthy.   They are nauseated that this undeserving creature can possibly be liked by anyone.  They hate her and want to see her destroyed.

Let me begin with a disclaimer.  I personally have zero fashion sense.  I am literally incapable of dressing myself.  In addition, I am color blind.  I do see color; it just isn’t the same color as seen by most people.  Up to now, the world has been protected from me showing up wearing some really bizarre color combinations solely through the dedicated efforts of my wife and my three daughters.  The pattern was been repeated on numerous occasions.  I would get dressed and come down stairs.  Instantly all four females would scan my outfit for color violations.  I still remember when my youngest daughter was five years old.  I came down the stairs and was immediately greeted with:  “Dad….NO!”  I now have “safe” outfits, usually including black pants which, theoretically, work with any color.

 I once was at a trade show where Doug McClure was making appearances at the booth next to me.  I noticed that everything he wore just looked right.  I was also keenly aware that even if I wore the exact same clothes, they still wouldn’t look right, because he was Doug McClure and I was, well…me.  It’s really simple:  some people got it, some people don’t.  With all due respect, Jacqueline Kennedy do, Michelle Obama don’t.  Even to someone like me, that is really obvious.  I couldn’t begin to give advice on how to look good, but I still know it when I see it.  Yet, there were all these articles gushing about Michelle Obama.  The following headlines are typical of the crap we have been assaulted with for the past two years:

New York Daily Post – August 27, 2008

Michelle Obama’s fashion running mate

AFP – January 21, 2009

Michelle Obama becomes First Fashion Lady

Today – November 25, 2009

Once again, first lady’s fashion sense dazzles

New York Times

Don’t Get Gravy on the First Lady’s Gown

Note:  This article was so over the top I couldn’t resist providing the following excerpt: 

FIRST Lady Michelle Obama is now officially a fashion plate.  Not that there were any doubts before, mind you. Often called the First Lady of Fashion, Mrs. Obama has a sense of style, as we all know by now, that rivals Jackie Kennedy’s.

 There are certainly friends of mine who do have some sense of fashion that confirm my opinion.  But, I viewed this similar to the way I view modern art.  Beauty must be in the eye of the beholder because sometimes what other people consider to be brilliant art looks to me like the random result of a collision between several open paint cans, each with a different color.  In the case of Michelle Obama, there were these “other pictures” of her circling the internet indicating that my personal opinion was not necessarily unique.   Then there was the following article today in the Hindustan Times.  This is from the HT Fashion Watcher and it is, well, refreshing:

 Heard what they said about you, Mrs O?

Is it dreadfully hot in India? Doesn’t she have a stylist on this trip? Her hair looks like she hasn’t bothered combing it and her makeup and eyebrows are also a bit off …” says CJ in London. “She needs a tailor and a stylist. Everyone in the whole world knows this,” says This isn’t just another celebrity being dissed in conversation; these are the comments that Michelle Obama’s outfits during her trip to India, are drawing on the World Wide Web. While the Indian media thought that the first lady’s outfits were elegant and understated, people on the other end of the globe had a different take on her choices.

From being called “frumpy” to “old and unflattering” to “sporting the worst look ever,” the bashing by bloggers began right from the day she landed in Mumbai wearing a blue-grey outfit. Comments like “It’s a colour for someone who’s 70,” or “the emperor’s wife has dreadful taste” have flooded mrs-o.org, a blog that follows Michelle Obama’s fashion sense. Readers on washingtonpost.com, dailymail.co.uk and even on huffingtonpost.com are not mincing their words.

So what’s the real reason the first lady is being fashion bashed? How can someone who’s been on best-dressed lists for three years in a row, suddenly be criticised for every piece of clothing or accessory she owns/wears?

The answer may lie in the recently held mid-term polls in the US. When a country is unhappy with the presidency, one of the first things that is often targeted is their lifestyle. Something that Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy are acutely aware of.

This is entertaining, but the author missed the point.  Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion hasn’t changed.  All that’s really happened is that the glow from the halo has diminished to a level where the star struck main stream media can actually see, well, Michelle Obama.  Jacqueline Kennedy’s legacy is still safe!

TDM