February 7, 2007
In The Film Billy Jack…
… there was a segment where, exasperated at the continued antics of the head bad guy’s spoiled son when catching him in action yet again, Billy Jack shook his head while looking down and pinching the bridge of his nose, and said, “You know, you remind me of a little monkey…”
For some reason, I’m reminded of that scene whenever I read where the Democrats are offering up yet another spin, half truth or bald faced lie about the state of affairs regarding one issue or another, just to make the President look bad or to sabotage one of his agendas for purely political reasons.
They demonstrate, time and time again, that the good of the United States or the people herein are of absolutely no importance to them, except where getting votes from the latter is concerned.
They lie about every aspect of our involvement in Iraq, they seek to sabotage our homeland security operations wherever possible, up to and including publicizing secret anti-terrorist ops so that the enemy learns of them and then, going a step further, spins them into surveillance operations that invade the privacy of all Americans.
They scream for independence from Arab oil, yet block any efforts to expand our domestic petroleum recovery.
When the Reagan Administration broadened our economy, creating jobs and allowing industries to flourish, they invented the term “Reaganomics” and made an obscene lie of it, citing it as a failure. When the Clinton Administration reaped the rewards of Reagan’s economic endeavors, they gave all the credit to Bubba, yet when Clinton’s administration went out in a recession, they blamed it on the incoming Bush Presidency, as though the instant he was elected, Dubya caused the entire economy to come crashing down, ignoring the fact that an economy rarely changes all that drastically in less than three or four years.
Even today, the Democrats holler that the Bush economy is a tragedy, purely for partisan political purposes, when in reality it is the healthiest it’s been in decades.
Politicians are typically late in picking up trends, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes Washington to acknowledge the big story in the Fiscal 2008 budget that President Bush unveiled yesterday: To wit, with a little spending restraint, Congress could balance the budget in no time.
You wouldn’t know this from all the garment-rending yesterday in response to Mr. Bush’s proposal to spend the not-so-meager sum of $2.9 trillion. Our favorite agonist is Kent Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, and he didn’t disappoint. “The President’s budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality, and continues to move America in the wrong direction,” said the Senator who was himself blocked from sneaking nearly $5 billion in “emergency” farm spending into a military construction bill in the final days of the last Congress. The North Dakotan needs to keep shouting disaster in a crowded political theater so he can justify his desire for a big tax increase.The news Mr. Conrad won’t broadcast is that over the past three years the federal deficit has shrunk by 58%. The Congressional Budget Office–not the White House–is estimating that the current year’s deficit (for fiscal 2007) will fall to $172 billion. That’s not bad given continuing Katrina relief spending, $30 billion for homeland security, and a couple hundred billion or so to fight the war on terror.
The White House is projecting that its new budget will eliminate the deficit by 2012 assuming Mr. Bush’s tax cuts are extended after 2010. We don’t put much stock in future budget forecasts because they depend on so many variables. But even CBO predicts the deficit should remain near or below 1% of GDP for the rest of the Bush Presidency. That’s well below the 40-year average of 2.4% of GDP.
This also means that the federal debt burden will continue to fall. Alarmists point to the $1.4 trillion rise in total federal debt from 2003-2006, but that amount is dwarfed by the $14 trillion in new household wealth created over the same period. And for all the international scolding of an allegedly profligate America, U.S. federal debt as a share of GDP is falling again (see the top chart nearby). At 37% in 2006 and heading south, the U.S. figure compares to 52% in Germany, 43% in France, and 79% in Japan. Once again rising total “debt” is a scare word used to justify higher taxes.
So once again, we see where the Democrats ignore the realities that most affect Americans and that signal a healthy economy in order to cast aspersions upon the President and on the Republicans in general, and at the same time lay the groundwork for gaining the approval of the people to do what the Democrats most love to do: Raise taxes, taking more money out of the pocket of the working American to spend on social programs that will purchase them more votes from the beneficiaries of these programs.
The issue I’m thinking about here is, of course, the Congressional Democrat majority’s intention to target the Bush tax cuts for extinction, and after seeing that goal reach fruition, increase taxes still more. Naturally, as stated, they aim to target the wealthiest Americans. You know, the same ones who, thanks entirely to the tax cuts, were able to invest more money in venues that have expanded their business interests, created jobs, generated more profit and created even more jobs, all the while multiplying, by taxpayer and revenue volume, the amount of taxes paid in to the U.S. Treasury far beyond what increasing taxes would have done.
The other news you won’t often hear concerns the soaring tax revenues in the wake of the 2003 supply-side tax cuts. Tax collections have risen by $757 billion, among the largest revenue gushers in history. Receipts, especially from high-income individuals and corporations, have been growing for some two years at nearly twice the rate of spending, which explains the falling deficit. Economic growth is always the key to eliminating red ink, which is why keeping this 63-month expansion rolling needs to be the main domestic priority. This requires making those lower 2003 tax rates permanent, rather than letting them expire in 2010 and socking the economy with the biggest tax increase in history.
If the mainstream media weren’t functioning as a propaganda agent for the Democrats and were instead telling the American people the truth as journalistic ethics actually require, today’s Democratic Party and the America-hating, socialist liberals who own it would have long since been relegated to the realm of distant memory.
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=620
February 7th, 2007 at 9:23 am
I’ve given up on any logic from the Dems. They create an imaginary crisis to solve by raising taxes and, at the same time, ignore the Islamic threat and want to water down the Patriot Act. And, as you’ve pointed out, the mainstream media aid and abet the insane world of the Dems.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:03 am
AOW –
No matter how far over the line and out of the realm of reality the Dems go, they’ll continue to go farther until the U.S. has either become a socialist country or we’re governed by Sharia law.
Then, when they find they’ve screwed themselves along with everybody else, they’ll blame it on the Republicans, Bush, anybody but themselves.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Dems and liberals in particular only accept reality as they see it. Facts a, proof, truth, evidence nothing matters except their percieved view of everything. The economy is a shambles, Iraq is a quagmire and a lost cause, GW made by man is destroying the earth all falicies that are proven wrong and are actually opposite of the liberal view. But this does not matter to a lib. They know better and the rest of us who are intelectually inferior to them and do not have the intelligence enough to understand anything must bow to their superior intellect and allow them to decide what is best for us and rule and control our lives. THAT IS THE DEM AND LIBERAL MINEDSET!
February 7th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Ken –
AND… the greatest problem is that the Republicans we put in office to represent us are allowing the liberal controlled Democrats to browbeat them into letting them force their destructive agendas on us. They keep silent while the Dems batter the lies into the public domain via vocal Democrats and the MSM.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I was skeptical about the tax cuts because of 1) the shifting rationale for these cuts, and 2) it seemed irresponsible to increase the deficit apparently without a legitimate plan to close the deficit.
In hindsight, I see that 1) the tax cuts were sound; it was Bush who could not present the reasons properly (either out of ignorance or because he was operating from a “faith” perspective and didn’t care or feel the need to justify them to the American people; so long as he was convinced he was right, nothing else mattered).
Unfortunately, he used this same modus operandi regarding the Iraq war, which in part may be why he’s encountering such problems today and not getting credit for success even thought things are going well at this point in time.
That is, with Iraq, as with the economy, while the media have certainly played a major role in misinforming the American people, the President also is culpable for providing them with ammunition by not properly “selling the call”.
As far as 2), it looks like from the tax receipts data, that the supply-side economics did a better job of predicting behavior than I had anticipated (assuming this isn’t one-time revenue at the expense of future revenue). That, coupled with strong economic activity and inflation that remains largely under control has given me more confidence in the ability of the private sector to meet needs better than federal programs.
Results do matter to me, and I’m listening more to the tax-cut advocates as a result of what has happened in the real world.
However, I wouldn’t know this to be the case from the President’s delivery nor from the mainstream media.
We have here a most unfortunate (for our country) convergence of incompetence (Bush) and malice (media).
February 7th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Civil Truth –
One of my most prevalent complaints about the Bush Administration has been the President’s lack of articulation when it comes to justifying his policies and, as you have noted, his reasons for our Iraq enterprise.
The MSM and the Democrats on the Hill have exploited their Republican counterparts’ total lack of any kind of vocal support for Bush to the fullest, the end result being that the left has been able to paint everything Bush does as a failure, a lie or pretty much anything they wish without encountering any resistance.
As far as the benefits of the tax cuts are concerned, the years I worked on Wall Street back in the 1980s served to teach me that the less you tax the rich, the more they invest, and the less you tax the average citizen, the more he or she spends or invests. Both generate employment and taxes. Distributing the tax cuts among the entire working population created tax volume that has outgunned federal expenditures. When Bush first pushed them through, I was one of those constituents who knew it was a good move, and as I think we argued last year in another of my comment threads, have been completely supportive from the get-go.
February 7th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Seth,
Wealth growth is great; the continuing skew in distribution is
Pretty convincing. In fact, let’s extrapolate tax cuts…eliminate all taxes. Not only would
this libertarian concept free megacorps to do what they do best, but it would free us from
foreign entanglements.
problematic. See http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03interviewswolff.html as to
why there are so few libertarians.
February 7th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
The truth is that the ones who practice deception and are disconnected from reality are the Democrats themselves. They call Repulicans all the things that they themselves are guilty of. Where’s a billionaire Republican when you need one? Since we cannot seem to undo the damage of the mainstream media, we should drop flyers throughout all the major cities in this country explaining exactly what the Democrats are up to. The same people who believe everything they hear will believe everything they read. Problem is they don’t read enough!
February 7th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
BB –
Edward Wolff is a socialist, and like all socialists, he believes that the rich should pay all the taxes and the average citizen should benefit, at no cost, from the success of the rich. Like all socialists, he seems to believe that the wealth of the richest families was somehow “issued” to them, that none of it was earned through hard work, sacrifice and risk taking, or simply because the earners of said wealth were among the best and the brightest in their respective fields of endeavor. Even if Joe Shmoe the 1st made himself rich and Joe Shmoe the 2nd and 3rd got to enjoy inherited wealth, the money was still earned and rightfully passed along to descendants.
The United States is not a socialist country, we are a capitalist republic. We represent more than 35% of the world’s wealth because we are allowed to keep more of what we earn, and most of that money is invested back into the system to create employment and generate taxes. People don’t flock in here from other countries because our system is unfair: it is not. They immigrate because they understand that this is a country in which they can live according to their efforts and achievements without being taxed into near oblivion.
That top 5% who pay a lower percentage of their incomes in taxes pay the actual dollar for dollar bulk, like 95%, of total taxes paid. The money they get to keep after taxes is invested — in financial instruments and business expansion that generate employment, which in turn generates sales tax and income tax and keeps people off the “dole” and off the street.
My point is that it is not the job of the rich to look after everyone else — it is, however, in the interests of the rest of us to allow the rich to retain the bulk of their profits, because their investment of those profits is what keeps the rest of us working and the economy moving.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Gayle –
If we could only drop leaflets!
As it now stands, all too many people read their local leftist propaganda rag on the way to work or watch Alphabet Network News at 11, and believe they’re on top of “the news”.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Your last paragraph says it all for me. The elite have invaded all the journalism schools, and have become the mouth pieces for these idiots. No matter how bad LIEberals do, they paint them as good … MSM is my target this year.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Ouch, Edward Wolff is a socialist? (I missed that on his 17 page ciricullum vitae). Perhaps we can accpet
the same data set from Kevin Phillips? After all, he wrote ‘The Emerging Republican Majority’
and engineered the ’southern strategy’ for Richard Nixon. Phillips’ ‘Wealth & Democracy’
reaches identical conclusions as Wolff. A socialist and republican agreeing…wha?
February 7th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
AB –
There is little if any difference between today’s MSM and Pravda during the Cold War years. They’ve had my bull’s eye painted on them since I first started blogging.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
BB –
Wolff’s POVs are pure socialist. Phillips parted company with the Republicans somewhere in the 1980s, in fact didn’t he go to work for the Portside Broadcasting Service?
February 7th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
PBS? Is that where that O’Reilly guy works? (I always think of it as the ‘billions and billions’
network, from watching Carl Sagan. Bert and Ernie Network is OK too)
February 8th, 2007 at 2:36 am
Funny you should mention Billy Jack, as I’ve had a post on the shelf for months, regarding Billy Jack.
February 8th, 2007 at 3:54 am
BB –
Bill O’Reilly could write guest columns on the Huffington Post and post at DU, and it would change nothing: He is a conservative first and last.
Phillips made it plain he switched sides a long time ago.
The Bert and Ernie Network, LOL!
Wordsmith –
I would definitely enjoy reading it, have you decided whether or not you’ll post it?
February 8th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
When you control the wealth you control the person. That is what the Democrats want.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Shoprat –
With the Democrats, it’s always about the money — the more they take from the working American and from big business, the more they can throw into entitlements to buy/control the votes of the beneficiaries of same.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
“The United States has one of the widest rich-poor gap of any high-income nation today, and that gap continues to grow.[9] In recent times, some prominent economists including Alan Greenspan have warned that the widening rich-poor gap in the U.S. population is a problem that could undermine and destabilize the country’s economy and standard of living.[10]”
..from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_the_United_States
So, OK, lay it on me how Alan G. is a lip-foaming dyed-in-the-wool socialist…:)
February 8th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
BB –
No, Alan Greenspan is not a socialist, LOL.
However, as in the global warming debate, I see no evidence to justify the theory that a large rich-poor gap will destabilize the economy. It’s the rich who create the jobs that keep the non-rich working.
In doing so, they take all the risks inherent in investing in a business and deal with all the liability and assets protection issues, as well as the matching of their employees’ social security taxes — in a big company, take Microsoft or the much maligned Wal-Mart, for example, that’s not small potatoes, pay insurance on employees, pay for benefits, and if they make megabucks doing so, well… ain’t nobody’s business but their own. We are, as I’ve said, a capitalist republic.
What doesn’t seem to get pointed out is that the economies of all those socialist Euro-countries everybody heaps with praise are way behind ours, and that the U.S. is, and can afford to be, the ATM for the rest of the world, because we are as we are.
February 9th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Huh, how the heck can Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Belgium and Sweden
have higher or equivalent standard of living AND per capita income higher than the
US? (there’s ugly rumors most a socialist (spit!) Poor people, suffereing without
a Republican majority…heh!
February 9th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
BB –
I love when folks argue about per capita income in socialist countries. For some reason, no one ever seems to factor in that they more than make up for it in double and triple the amount of taxes we pay here in the U.S. That’s an awfully high difference to pay for “free” health insurance, LOL.
You do the math.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Seth, I perceive a climate of political elitism in the legislature and it has become indistinguishable between most members of both parties (a damning indictment on the GOP). The legislators have taken up an aire of knowing what’s best (and spending out of the public coffers so as to ensure their continued political career) rather than ‘representing’ the constituents who placed them in congress to begin with…
I believe in a free capitalist democratic republic, even if the spread between extreme wealth and poverty is cavernous. At least people here have choices and the decisions they make provide for their future (or not).
BB, why are you taking the angle you’ve chosen in this comment stream? I do not perceive you as favoring socialism over our economic system. It just seems strange to view your comments that seem to lean way left.
February 9th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Old Soldier –
My own view of what the GOP has become echoes yours right down to the last detail. It is both a shameful and distressing state of affairs.
I think BB is just having a little fun.
February 9th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Seth,
Take Norway, for example. Their taxes are going down, and much of
the burden is ‘value added tax’ which has been considered here at
times. Unemployment is 3.5%, pretty low for socialist welfare cheats
and they beat us on health, longevity and education.
OS,
Perhaps genetics, coming from nineteenth century Norwegian immigrants.
We cleared the prairies of the Dakotas and turned the upper midwest
states into progressive productive farm/industrial/high tech places.
(Watch these free-thinking areas switch back and forth from red to blue all the
time). I may be liberal and like some populist ideas, but hardly a socialist!
None of us would trade our US individual freedoms for gov’t control. My
contention here is simply the disparity which is growing, naturally under
a free economic system. This has been recognized as a problem, or at least
at some point it will be, by other than socialist thinkers. For example, this
week WalMart, Intel and AT&T called for universal healthcare. WalMart, Intel
and AT&T…socialists? Hardly, but even THEY recognize a problem when they
see it. Nor do I approach this naively: The small European countries possess
a luxury we do not: they are generally of one race and have no immigrant problem
(well at least the northern nordic places) and they have fairly high consensus
with small population. So, Old Soldier, if I seem to lean left, I don’t think
it’s ‘way’ L. Just definitely not Ann Coulter here!
And Seth,
I generally do not ‘unload’, argue or get long-winded. But you have always
been fair and open-minded, if stuck in your ways. Which, believe me, is rare
indeed. (at least you never called me what you really wanted to) I suspect your
Jewish heritage, the fairness and oblique humor therefrom, is a factor in making
this a forum, rather than a cheerleader monologue (although you excell in that
area as well, heh). So I feel free and obligated to challenge with my provincial
abilities some of the tenets of the laizzes-faire (French *spit*) crowd. Thanks
February 9th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
BB –
Leif the Leftist, heh heh.
Your comments are always welcome and often fun to address.
February 10th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Wow I could feel the passion in this post!
I cant add any more than what’s been posted, however I like the Leaflet idea also lol.
But like you said, who will read it? They will just blame us for more manmade “Global Warming” by littering.
Great Post Seth
February 10th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Marie –
Many thanks.
It’s passion born of intense frustration. The Democrats and the MSM recognize no limits when it comes to shameless deceit and downright treason, and thanks to them we are headed down a path that no true American wants this country to follow.
February 11th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
hi there set,
just wanted to stop by to say hi
Got out of hospital…had a surgery on the left arm. It’s a nerve thingy and the arm is plastered (no not me…i am on painkiller :p )
typing with one hand sucks but at lerast i can still write letters cuze i am doomed to do NOTHING! AAAAAACK!!!! I hate to not be able to work!!!!
anyway…enough about me….how are you?
February 11th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Hi, Nelly!
I hope your arm heals fast. Being plastered, it’s at least feeling no pain, LOL.
I’m getting ready to relocate (actually, behind schedule) for business reasons, plus buried in ongoing work and keeping busy.
Somewhere in the next few weeks, when I’ve finished up a bunch of stuff I still have to do, I plan to spend a few weeks totally vegetating, taking a complete break from life.
February 12th, 2007 at 12:12 am
I would definitely enjoy reading it, have you decided whether or not you’ll post it?
Um….it’s on the shelf. Lol. I just have to be in the right mood to finish it. It’s not so much about the movie as it is a post directed at my pacifist blog commenter, Dan Trabue, and the song, “One Tin Soldier”. I like the song and the lyrics, but it’s sooooo pacifist. Also, I think I was going to bring up the billyjack website that gives moveon.org a run for its money.
February 12th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Oh, and for the longest time I’ve been searching hard for the SNL skit Billy Paul, played by Paul Simon. Have you seen it? I keep hoping someone will upload it to Youtube. I think that is what originally sidetracked me from finishing my post. I so badly wanted that in my post.
February 12th, 2007 at 3:29 am
Wordsmith –
Billy Jack, being one of the “rough men” willing to stand up and protect others so they can live in peace, would probably not meet with Dan’s approval: In the course of a disagreement with me here over a year ago, he maintained that Saddam Hussein should have been ousted without the use of military force, though he didn’t seem to have any idea how — very liberal, LOL.
While the film delivered a pacifist message, it also managed, wittingly or unwittingly, to convey the message that those of us who are willing to protect others in our society are also here for a purpose. Had it not been for Billy Jack’s presence, the townfolk would have been a lot more bold about messing with the hippies at the reservation school.
One Tin Soldier is a cool song. But the story it tells is that of a violent society (the valley people) slaughtering a non-violent society (the mountain people) and taking their treasure. For me, that left a lesson: Had the mountain people been more realistic and realized that just because they were pacifists didn’t mean that everyone else was, and that aggressive societies would not respect, but rather use their pacifism against them, perhaps they might have seperated the more physical from among their ranks and spent some of that treasure to have them armed and trained as a protective force.
I’m sure that those on the liberal side of the political spectrum did not get the same message I did, though.
I don’t think I’ve seen that particular SNL skit, but then my greatest interest in watching the show was during the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players days, and I don’t recall the skit from then.
February 14th, 2007 at 1:10 am
It’s probably on dvd. You would get a hoot and a holler watching that skit. Paul Simon captures the character quite well. They did a parody of the scene at the soda fountain shop where the bigots dump flour on one of the hippy’s heads to make him/her white.
wittingly or unwittingly,
Haha…unwittingly, I believe. Because the message seems one of pacifism; but I know that Billy Jack represents what is repressed within those pacifists. I’m sure there is something in the hearts of the Dan Trabue’s that secretly wishes they could unleash righteous violence against those who deserve it; rather than hold in the pent up aggression. And they draw pleasure from seeing him kick ass, knowing it’s all fantasy that they can’t live out in real life.
February 14th, 2007 at 4:13 am
Wordsmith –
I can’t argue with that reasoning. Since pacifists live in their own Utopian fantasy anyway, living through the deeds of characters like Billy Jack shouldn’t be too far off the reservation for them.
Dan’s philosophy seems to be that there’s always a peaceful solution, even when you’re dealing with people whose religion dictates that they kill you no matter what you offer, say or do.
Predators love sheep.
Re the “Billy Paul” skit, I’d love to see it!