Saturday, September 04, 2004

If they *really* disapproved they'd call them Republicans

This should have happened: Guerrillas and fighters took over the New York Times today and swore vengeance if the Times ever again wrote "guerrillas" or "fighters" to describe people who obviously were "terrorists".

Alas, what really happened is described by Michelle Malkin here.

Note to jihadis - as long as you stick with shooting up kids in schools you needn't fear negative coverage by the NY Times. But heaven help you if you should touch an abortion clinic...

Busted!

Erik catches a cartoonist making an ass of himself here.

How to prevent or minimize violence in schools

Hint - it's obvious to anyone but a liberal.

You can't make this stuff up

Well, maybe you could make it up. But you couldn't get people to actually believe it, could you?

Yes you can.

Notice

I don't want to hear another peep about discrimination against Muslims unless it starts and ends with LOUD condemnations of all jihadis, like the fiends at the Russian school.

It's long past time to declare a side and stick with it. And IMO anyone who won't condemn the jihadis is on their side.

Any Muslim who isn't one of the radicals might as well start fighting against the radicals anyway. After all, to these killers' eyes you're an infidel too - perhaps even the worst kind. They'll get you sooner or later.

Maybe some are starting to catch on.

Cocked hat bowling

Looking for a league? You'll probably have to go to St. Charles, MO, just outside St. Louis on I-70. For details check this out.

Friday, September 03, 2004

"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..."

I'm thinking even Mary Poppins couldn't sell this. I suppose if you chill it and mix it with some "Old Milwaukee" you'd never know the difference.

The stuff is sterile, and I understand that certain drugs can be recycled via this means. Even so, I'm hoping it doesn't catch on.

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Negative campaigning!

Some people get an idea in their heads and it's bye-bye reason. One of the sillier ones is the idea that negative campaigning is bad. Women in particular seem susceptible to this.

No doubt it would be bad if all campaigning were done this way. But surely no one expects candidates to expose their own weaknesses. And if the people who are crying like babies over the Swift boat ads and the money they got from people connected from Republicans would kindly line up some Democrats to give to them instead, I'm sure the Swift boat veterans would be happy to take that money instead.

And of course George W. Bush is an incumbent. You can see what he has done as President, for good or ill, and the net score is positive. For John Kerry OTOH you have only the claims of a demonstrated flip-flopper who has shown the willingness to betray even his band of brothers on the Swift boats for his pathetic political career. Under those circumstances, why would anyone believe a thing he promises?

Beware of those who complain about negative campaigning. They have something to hide.

Unfathomable mystery

Being male, I'm not much for clothes shopping. I do it as little as I can. But there is one thing I have noticed.

Large men wear larger sized clothes than smaller men. Are you with me so far?

Large men on average are taller than smaller men. Was that controversial?

Then why on earth are the large sizes always at the bottom of the stack, with the runt sizes on top? Isn't that exactly bass-ackwards?

Who is it in the fashion industry who forces this situation where buying clothes means we bigger men either bend over or get on our knees?

Monday, August 30, 2004

Imagine what a success would be like

Glenn Reynolds linked to this graph from the Detroit News this weekend showing effects of the Bush tax cuts on the distribution of the tax burden among income groups.

At a flat rate for everyone of course people who make x% more money will pay x% more in taxes, so rich will always be paying more in taxes than poor. That's not good enough for lefties, however - they want a "progressive" tax system in which the next x% in income will cost more than x% in additional taxes. Fairness be damned - the intent is to cause the richer people, who presumably are more able to pay, to pay an even greater share of the tax burden.

No one has ever explained to me just how it is that a public work, welfare payment, missile or other public expenditure is somehow more valuable to the rich than the poor. One could argue that the opposite is true. But lefties figure that unevenly distributed income is somehow unjust, so they offer injustice in return by making people who have more pay more for the sole reason that they have more. Should we do that at grocery stores too? "Paper or plastic?" "What was your adjusted gross income last year?"

Anyway, the lefties screamed bloody murder at Bush's tax rate cuts for upper incomes. Knowing that their knee-jerk followers aren't too sharp mathematically, they equated lower tax rates with lower tax receipts. That's been known to be wrong for centuries, but lefties won't let lies stand in their way - it fits the lies they retail about Republicans so it became their story.

Well look at the charts and see what happened. Despite the lower rates, the rich paid more of the total income tax bill! A Republican extracted more money from the "rich".

One would think that lefties, who always want more money for govt, would take a lesson like this to heart - it's possible to increase receipts at a lower rate. Admittedly it doesn't always work (but the higher tax rates already are, the more likely it will).

But who says lefties want more govt revenue above all? There's another reason for them to keep taxes and other burdens higher than they should - it increases the value of their favors. Why else would a sane businessman give money to lefties?

No, the above isn't too rigorously presented. If you want that there are econobloggers out there who can do a better job - try the Carnival of the Capitalists. But they'll wind up reaching the same conclusions.

One last thing. Notice the headline of the linked article: "Bush fails to get deserved credit for tax cut benefits". What kind of wording is that? As long as he beats that undertaxed rich guy John Kerry, if Bush's "failure" is in getting credit for what he did, I can live with that.

It beats accounting...

Carlos Barrios Orta is a "wastewater diver" in Mexico City.

....He loves his job. Two years ago, he gave up a career in accounting for this -- which, he noted, says something about accounting.....For this, Barrios earns about $480 a month. It's not much, certainly -- his diving helmet alone cost the city $3,500 -- but it's more than he ever made as an accountant....he's happy to know that while there are millions of divers in the oceans, only four have the privilege of diving in the Mexico City sewer system....

Ya gotta like his attitude.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Kerry's goons

See this clip for an example.

Calling John Edwards

"The woman, known as Jane Doe in court documents, was horrified to learn that a lab worker who had drawn her blood in 1997 and 1999 had admitted reusing needles.
Several months later, she discovered she was HIV-positive."

If John Edwards wanted a case with some merits he'd be all over this one, instead of extorting millions driving North Carolina obstetricians out of business as he's been doing for years.

If you want to know how things turned out, look here.

Denial?

Allegedly Laura Branigan had had headaches for a couple of weeks. Now she's dead of an aneurysm.

Maybe the doc wouldn't have caught it. Maybe it would have been inoperable.

Or maybe she'd still be alive if she'd had medical attention.

Only 4 million

4 million what? Americans that jihadis are to kill. Any more than that would be immoral, according to this.

What kind of people do you think they are, anyway?