Say Anything Blog

I read this in the Wall Street Journal.

I find it funny that the dems aren’t going to talk about it till after 2008. I think it is time for the Right wingers to get out there and expose the dems and beat them at their own game. This is ridiculous. I think taxes are high enough. The reason the Democrats are getting away from this that they are getting a free pass from the left leaning Main Stream Media. Look for right leaning talk show hosts to be all over it. Hannity was on it today already. Its time to take the dems to task. ND residents should be writing Dorganoff and Conrad right away.

The Coming Tax Increase

April 5, 2007; Page A12

What with the big stories of Iraq and the Presidential horse race, and the non-story of the U.S. attorneys, the Beltway press corps seems all tapped out. That does leave the small matter of economic policy, however, and the big but uncovered news that Congress has just lit a fuse for the biggest tax increase in history.

The new House and Senate majorities have now passed budget resolutions—five-year budget outlines—that include the repeal of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Republicans are overstating things when they imply this means a tax increase this year. The Bush tax cuts don’t expire until the end of 2010, and Democrats aren’t about to tip their tax hand before the 2008 election. But under the cover of zero media attention, Democrats are constructing a budget process that will make a tax increase all but inevitable.

The ploy here is “pay-as-you-go” budget rules that Democrats are implementing in the name of “restoring fiscal responsibility.” A few journalists even quote that phrase with a straight face. But everyone in Washington knows that “paygo” is all about making tax cuts more difficult, and not about slowing the growth of spending.

Under “paygo,” extending the Bush tax cuts is itself a tax cut that must be offset either with cuts in entitlement spending or with other tax increases. And paygo merely constrains the growth of “new” entitlements. Entitlement rules already in place don’t count under paygo rules, so Medicare, Medicaid and the new “children’s” health-care program (SCHIP) will keep growing on autopilot. So-called discretionary spending—defense, education, highways, etc.—isn’t affected at all.

This is a big enough political con. But an even bigger ruse is the Democratic-media chorus that the Bush tax cuts must be repealed because they’ve left the Treasury high and dry. The nearby chart tells the modern story of federal tax revenues as a share of the economy. And what it shows is that tax receipts did plunge earlier this decade from their late-1990s heights, reaching a trough in fiscal 2004 of 16.3% of GDP. The economy was still recovering from the collapse of business investment and the stock market bubble, and no doubt the lower Bush rates played a role in reducing revenue for a time.

But the lower rates also provided a spur to incentives that led to a rebound in investment, stock prices and ultimately in economic growth, individual incomes and corporate profits. This produced, in turn, a very sharp rebound in federal tax receipts—to 17.6% of GDP in fiscal 2005 and 18.4% in 2006. The Congressional Budget Office—now run by Democrats—predicts it will reach 18.6% in fiscal 2007.

This is slightly above the 40-year historical average of 18.3%, and CBO says it will climb again in each of the next two years before dipping in 2010. Despite the Bush tax cuts—or we should say because of them—federal revenues are above where they’ve been for most of the last half century. The government is far from starved for cash.

What Democrats really don’t want you to know is what will happen to receipts after 2010 if the tax cuts expire: CBO says the feds will grab a huge additional chunk of the economy to spend—more than 1.5% of GDP a year in extra tax revenue by 2017. At 20.1% in that year, taxes as a share of the economy would exceed every postwar year except for the 20.9% of 2000, when the stock bubble and bonuses tossed many taxpayers into higher tax brackets.

Now, we hardly take CBO projections as gospel. They’re usually wrong beyond the first year or so because they ignore the impact of higher or lower tax rates on incentives and growth. So CBO is surely mistaken that letting the Bush rates expire would have little effect on growth and that tax receipts would continue to mount. A tax increase of that magnitude could well lead to a recession and a plunge in receipts.

Our point in citing these CBO projections is to show that the tax increase fuse has now been lit. Do nothing and taxes will rise as much as they have at any one time since World War II. Democrats have made the decision to obscure this burning fuse, and the press corps is ignoring it. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the country has to play along. How to handle those looming tax hikes is the most important economic choice the Congress and next President are likely to face. It’s a debate we should start having now, before the fuse burns down.

If only the paid their fair share
Nick Coleman: Before the rich can be soaked, they have to pay their fair share

This news paper colum is basically calling for redistribution of the wealth. Why should he be any different the left has been telling everyone since they took power that they are going to sock it to the rich. These are same people that create jobs for the rest of the masses. Expect classwarefareism soon.

It’s the same old tired debate about the rich not paying their fair share. It’s no secret that Coleman is a leftist all you have to do is read his articles. Now he is trying to get people to support the tax hikes the Socialist Republic of Minnesota is proposing. The left is using the mantra if we only make the rich pay more.

With the advent of global warming, Minnesota can no longer count on brutally cold weather to keep out the riffraff.
We need high taxes for that.

I’m only joking, but you’d think the Legislature’s proposal to raise income taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent of Minnesota taxpayers amounts to putting signs up at the Iowa and Wisconsin lines saying, “Keep Out, Rich People.”

It’s an intriguing idea, I admit. No more rich people? No more Xanadus on Minnetonka, no ever-increasing demands for corporate tax breaks and endless public subsidies. But the headlines in the newspaper practically have been apocalyptic—“State’s top tax rate may lead nation!”

To me, the headlines have a nostalgic quality. Ah, it feels so good to lead the nation again.

In something.

But the truth is that while the quality of life in Minnesota has been deteriorating in almost every way that matters to common people, Minnesota’s wealthiest have been getting a tax break that they don’t need and don’t deserve. And the result is that the cost of government has shifted unfairly to the middle class while the things that matter to the middle class—public schools, roads, public safety—have declined.

If raising taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent of Minnesotans to the level they were at before conservative Candy Men went on a welfare-for-the-rich binge is what it takes to turn things around, well, I think Minnesotans would make the sacrifice. We aren’t stupid.

According to the state’s Department of Revenue, Minnesota households earning between $45,000 to $105,000 (the state’s median income is about $47,000) pay 12.3 percent in state and local taxes, while households earning above $105,000 pay 10.9 percent. The very wealthiest Minnesotans, earning more than $355,000, pay about 9 percent.

So the rate for the middle class is about one-third higher than for the rich.

You want apocalyptic headlines? Try this: “Minnesota soaks middle class while the rich skate!”

The “progressive” state of Minnesota has adopted a regressive tax system that is becoming more regressive. And it’s time to call a halt to that.

For five years, Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been playing a shell game and pretending taxes haven’t gone up. All the while, licenses and fees have shot up by $1 billion, and property taxes have been going through the roof—averaging an 11 percent increase per year. Since Pawlenty came into office, residential property taxes have increased $1.4 billion, or $866 per household, according to Wayne Cox of Minnesota Citizens for Tax Justice.

“We spend less money per capita, when you adjust for inflation, than we did five years ago,” says Cox. “That’s why schools are in financial disarray and the roads have gone to hell and cities have been laying off firefighters and police officers. The Legislature is trying to get the state back to the level of services we had before.”

Just when you think that political correctness couldn’t get any sillier the Democratics prove us wrong with this garbage. Read the story here

Erin Conaton, the committee’s staff director, sent out the 15-page memo titled “Style Guide for Defense Authorization Report.”

“When referencing military operations throughout the world, please be as specific as possible. Please avoid using colloquialisms such as, ‘the war on terrorism, or the ‘Long War’ Please do not use the term ‘global war on terrorism,’ “ according to the memo.

Late Wednesday afternoon, a source told FOX News that the panel had sent out a revised version making it clear that there was “no political intent behind” the wording.

President Bush began using the "global War on Terror" phrase after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The memo offers replacement phrases such as "war in Iraq," "war in Afghanistan," "operations in the Horn of Africa" or "ongoing operations throughout the world."

Democratic staffers revised the memo to ensure that there "was no misunderstanding or confusion ... it was never intended to be anything other than (to get) the highest degree of specificity and accuracy" for the legislation.

Boehner said Democrats have a "dismal" national security record with efforts to push through non-binding resolutions against President Bush's Iraq plan, adding pork-barrel spending in unrelated legislation and leaving the nation's capital for a recess without passing legislation backed by the president with funding for U.S. troops.

"It's no wonder Democrats don't like the phrases 'global War on Terror,' they have completely failed to take the threat of global terrorism seriously," Boehner said.

Check this story out. This is an AP story that is floating out there right now. Seems that the AP can be put into the bash Bush crowd too.

Western security officials, who insisted on anonymity because the issue related to security matters, told AP that among those held were well-known suspects with strong links to al-Qaida.

But some U.S. allies have expressed consternation at the transfers to the prisons. One Western diplomat in Nairobi, who agreed to speak to AP only if not quoted to avoid angering U.S. officials, said he sees the United States as playing a guiding role in the operation.

John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch expert on counter-terrorism, went further. He said in an e-mail that the United States has acted as “ringleader” in what he labeled a “decentralized, outsourced Guantanamo.”

Details of the arrests, transfers and interrogations slowly emerged as AP and human rights groups investigated the disappearances, diplomats tracked their missing citizens and the first detainees to be released told their stories.

One investigator from an international human rights group, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media, said Ethiopia had secret jails at three locations: Addis Ababa, the capital; an Ethiopian air base 37 miles east of the capital; and the far eastern desert close to the Somali border.

More than 100 of the detainees were originally arrested in Kenya in January, after almost all of them fled Somalia because of the intervention by Ethiopian troops accompanied by U.S. special forces advisers, according to Kenyan police reports and U.S. military officials.

Those people were then deported in clandestine pre-dawn flights to Somalia, according to the Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum and airline documents. At least 19 were women and 15 were children.

In Somalia, they were handed over to Ethiopian intelligence officers and secretly flown to Ethiopia, where they are now in detention, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says.

A further 200 people, also captured in Somalia, were mainly Ethiopian rebels who backed the Somali Islamist movement, according to one rights group and a Somali government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his job. Those prisoners also were taken to Ethiopia, human rights groups say.

Kenya continues to arrest hundreds of people for illegally crossing over from Somalia. But it is not clear if deportations continue.

The Pentagon announced last week that one Kenyan al-Qaida suspect who fled Somalia, Mohamed Abul Malik, was arrested and flown to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

When contacted by AP, Ethiopian officials denied that they held secret prisoners or that any detainees were questioned by U.S. officials.

“No such kind of secret prisons exist in Ethiopia,” said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. He declined to comment further.

A former prisoner and the families of current and former captives tell a different story.

“It was a nightmare from start to finish,” Kamilya Mohammedi Tuweni, a 42-year-old mother of three who has a passport from the United Arab Emirates, told AP in her first comments after her release in Addis Ababa on March 24 from what she said was 2 1/2 months in detention without charge.

She is the only released prisoner who has spoken publicly. She was freed a month after being interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed by a U.S. agent, she said. Tuweni, an Arabic-Swahili translator, said she was arrested while on a business trip to Kenya and had never been to Somalia or had any links to that country.

She said she was arrested Jan. 10. Tuweni said she was beaten in Kenya, then forced to sleep on a stone floor while held in Somalia in a single room with 22 other women and children for 10 days before being flown to Ethiopia on a military plane.

Finally, she said, she was taken blindfolded from prison to a private villa in the Ethiopian capital. There, she said, she was interrogated with other women by a male U.S. intelligence agent. He assured her that she would not be harmed but urged her to cooperate, she said.

In a telephone conversation with AP, Tuweni said the man identified himself as a U.S. official, but not from the FBI. A CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that the agency had no contact with Tuweni.

“We cried the whole time because we did not know what would happen. The whole thing was very scary,” said Tuweni, who flew back to her family in Dubai a day after her release.

Tuweni’s version of her transfer out of Kenya is corroborated by the manifest of the African Express Airways flight 5Y AXF. It shows she was taken to Mogadishu, Somalia, with 31 other people on an unscheduled flight chartered by the Kenyan government.

The family of a Swedish detainee, 17-year-old Safia Benaouda, said she was freed from Ethiopia on March 27 and arrived home the following day. Benaouda had traveled to Somalia with her fiance but fled to Kenya during the Ethiopian military intervention, her mother said.

“She is exhausted, her face is yellow and she’s lost about 10 kilograms (22 pounds),” her mother, Helena Benaouda, a 47-year-old Muslim convert who heads the Swedish Muslim Council, wrote on a Web site she set up to help secure her daughter’s release. “She was beaten with a stick when she demanded to go to the toilet.”

The mother spoke briefly by telephone with AP, saying any information she had was being posted on the Web site. She declined to make her daughter available for an interview.

According to the Web site, an American specialist visited the location where Benaouda was being held and took DNA samples and fingerprints of detainees. It said the teenager was never charged or allowed access to lawyers. The teen was also concerned about a 7-month-old baby that was in detention with her, the Web site said.

The transfer from Kenya to Somalia, and eventually to Ethiopia, of a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, Amir Mohamed Meshal, raised disquiet among FBI officers and the State Department. He is the only American known to be among the detainees in Ethiopia.

U.S. diplomats on Feb. 27 formally protested to Kenyan authorities about Meshal’s transfer and then spent three weeks trying to gain access to him in Ethiopia, said Tom Casey, deputy spokesman for the State Department.

He confirmed Meshal was still in Ethiopian custody pending a hearing on his status.

An FBI memo read to AP by a U.S. official in Washington, who insisted on anonymity, quoted an agent who interrogated Meshal as saying the agent was “disgusted” by Meshal’s deportation to Somalia by Kenya. The unidentified agent said he was told by U.S. consular staff that the deportation was illegal.

“My personal opinion was that he may have been a jihadi a-hole, but the precedent of ‘deporting’ U.S. citizens to dangerous situations when there is no reason to do so was a bad one,” the official quoted the memo as saying.

I have a question that needs to be asked? Why should we care? First off we are not talking about a bunch of choirboys here. We are talking about hardened Jihadis that can’t be reasoned with or bargained with, they do not use logic. These people would kill American’s if they get the chance.

This woman is a disgrace to the US uniform, I feel I have that right to say this since I served my country with Honor. These wackos do more damage to the USA credibility than anyone in the Bush Administration.

I am sure most are asking the same question that I am, so it’s a wonder she was able to make Col. This stuff is almost as bad as Cindy Sheehan, and she sounds about as bright. I would be willing to bet that she is a left over Clinton Stoog, like some have suggested a recipient of affirmative action.

Its no wonder she is part of the Hate American First crowd, the ones that blame America for all the worlds problems. You know the ones that say it’s all our fault. The same ones that attack the president of the USA and call Bush Hitler. The same tired argument that Bush lied. The ones that are going around saying that the USA is violating International Law. Bill is right it's was about Iran and she some how ties it to its Bush's fault.

Stepping off Soap Box after Rant.

Some of this stuff from Rosie is so silly that it would be impossible to even phantom that some one is this stupid.

This is funny

I saw this woman on the O’Reilly Factor last night and she is a loony bird. How can a woman that was an army officer turn into such an idiot? How can she be so un-American How can she stand up and speak for that yellow Lt. Ehren Watada.

What a piece of work.

Just like I said it was going to happen. It’s starting to happen already. Good bye good economy. They are also going to raise the national debt by 2.2 trillion dollars. Hum, I guess all of their drive by shootings of Bush were just meaningless barbs and shots.

Grassley: Dems prepare to raise taxes by nearly $1trillion

A Republican member of the Senate Budget Committee says his Democratic colleagues are poised to raise taxes by more than $900 billion.

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Senate Democrats say in order to meet their goal of balancing the federal budget by 2012 they plan to repeal President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax relief bills. But Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the top Republican on the tax writing Finance Committee, says repealing the Bush tax cuts would reverse “twenty months of economic expansion.”

Grassley, who serves on the tax writing Finance Committee, says the Senate Democratic leadership budget would increase taxes by $916 billion, increase non-defense discretionary spending by $140 billion, and increase the national debt by $2.2 trillion.
“On January 1, 2011, or December 31, 2010, the tax decreases that we passed in 2001 and 2003 are going to sunset,” he says. “So they do not have in their budget continuing the tax policy of this decade—and so on that date in 2010, you’re going to have the biggest tax increase in the history of the country.”

As Grassley explains, “Now they would say they aren’t increasing taxes because the present law calls for taxes to go up automatically, and they take credit for that revenue – and in fact, they believe that these taxes ought to go up. And I don’t believe they should; I believe we ought to keep the existing tax policy we have.”

Grassley says in the last three years, at least $700 billion of additional revenue have poured into the U.S. treasury because of the economic activity of the president’s tax cuts.

He adds that the Democrats’ plan to raise taxes would be tantamount to “killing the goose that laid the golden egg.”

Funny joke

The train was packed, and the U. S. Marine
walked the entire length looking for a seat, but a well-dressed, middle-aged, French woman’s poodle took the only seat remaining. The war-weary Marine asked, “Ma’am, may I have that seat?”

The French woman just sniffed and said to no one in particular, “Americans are so rude. My little Fifi is using that seat.”

The Marine walked the entire train again, but the only seat left was under that dog. “Please, ma’am. May I sit down? I’m very tired.”

She snorted, “Not only are you Americans rude, you are also arrogant!”

This time the Marine didn’t say a word; he just picked up the little dog, tossed it out the train window, and sat down.

The woman shrieked, “Someone must defend my honor! Put this American in his place!”

An English gentleman sitting nearby spoke up,
“Sir, you Americans seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong thing. You hold the fork in the wrong hand; you drive your vehicles on the wrong side of the road.

And now, Sir, you seem to have thrown the wrong bitch out the window!

Wait till there is a DNC president

Politics in Washington, DC has become nothing more than a political show with non-stop grand standing. The democrats are also revisiting the politics of personal destruction. I hope the GOP leadership is taking notes. 

Since the transparent democrats have took over the house and senate they have shown the American people nothing in the way of a working agenda, other than get Bush and Cheney. Finally after 6 years Bush had the balls to stand up and threaten to veto the ridiculous bill the democrats have pushed through the house and senate. It is in my opinion 6 years too late.

As the 109th congress has been in session for roughly two months the Democrats have done nothing but hammer Bush and threaten to raise our taxes and vote on meaningless non-binding not teeth resolutions. Wow, I am impressed. Now they have focused their attention on the attorney General with the hopes of finally being able to get Carl Rove.

If a democrat wins the White House in 2008 I suggest the Republican do every thing in their power to blow that person legacy and presidency. This is exactly what the left leaning MSN has done to GW Bush. From the minute this man took office they have been like Vultures circling a road kill. I think turn about is fair play. I suggest the Republican leaders grow a pair and start fighting back.

Now the Dems have voted to surrender to the terrorists.

Wow this is going to make the lefties mad.

Rummy won’t be charged

Judge: Rumsfeld Can’t Be Tried on Torture Charges

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cannot be tried on allegations of torture in overseas military prisons, a federal judge said Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job.

The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners.

“Despite the horrifying torture allegations,” Hogan wrote, he could find no case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as unprecedented.

Government officials are normally immune from such lawsuits, and foreigners held overseas are not normally afforded U.S. constitutional rights.

Allowing the case to go forward, Hogan said in December, might subject government officials to all sorts of political lawsuits. Even Osama bin Laden could sue, Hogan said, claiming two American presidents threatened to have him murdered.

“There is no getting around the fact that authorizing monetary damages remedies against military officials engaged in an active war would invite enemies to use our own federal courts to obstruct the Armed Forces’ ability to act decisively and without hesitation,” Hogan wrote Tuesday.

Had the Rumsfeld lawsuit been allowed to go forward, attorneys for the ACLU might have been able to force the Pentagon to disclose what officials knew about abuses at prisons such as Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what was done to stop it.

Finally a judge ruled in favor of Homeland security. No while I am not advocating torture, I won't cry one tear for any of these murderous terrorists. KSM has complained about techniques used against him, hey buddy consider it a occupational hazard. The man planed one of the most horrific attacks on the history of our nation. So what if he was waterboarded, maybe we should have done the same thing you did to Nicholas Berg… Your lucky American are more human and treat their prisoners better than Al Quaida does. If that was the case you wouldn't even be alive right now.

This picture doesn’t need much explaining.

Hum this is interesting Just think we only have 18months till the election. Poor Hillary. Edit, one of Barrack Hussein Obama's staffers has taken responsibility for the you tube add.

This is an interesting articleCheck it out

Illegal aliens are killing more Americans than the Iraq war, says a new report from Family Security Matters that estimates some 2,158 murders are committed every year by illegal aliens in the U.S. The group says that number is more than 15 percent of all the murders reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. and about three times the representation of illegal aliens in the general population.

Mike Cutler, a former senior special agent with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (the former INS), is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and an advisor to Family Security Matters (FSM). He says the high number of Americans being killed by illegal aliens is just part of the collateral damage that comes with tolerating illegal immigration.

“The military actually called for the BORTAC team, … the elite unit of the Border Patrol, to be detailed to Iraq to help to secure the Iraqi border,” Cutler notes. “Now, if our military can understand that Iraq’s security depends in measure on the ability to protect its border against insurgents and terrorists, then why isn’t our country similarly protecting our own borders ?” he asks.

“We are not five and a half years, nearly, after 9/11, and yet our borders remain open,” the Center for Immigration Studies fellow observes. “We have National Guardsmen assigned on the border, but it turns out they are unarmed,” he points out. “Their rules of engagement are very simple : if armed intruders head your way, run in the other direction.”

This situation would “almost be comical if it wasn’t so tragic,” Cutler asserts. “If our borders are wide open, this means that drugs, criminals, and terrorists are entering our country just as easily as the dishwashers,” he says.

The report from FSM estimates that the 267,000 illegal aliens currently incarcerated in the nation are responsible for nearly 1,300,000 crimes, ranging from drug arrests to rape and murder. Such statistics, Cutler contends, debunk the claim that illegal immigration is a victimless crime. “Then we even have another problem,” he adds, “and that’s the Visa Waiver Program.”

The federal government’s Visa Waiver Program enables nationals of certain countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa. According to the U.S. State Department website, the waiver program was established in 1986 with the objective of “eliminating unnecessary barriers to travel,” stimulating America’s tourism industry, and allowing the government to focus consular resources in other areas.

Cutler says the U.S. retains the Visa Waiver Program because the nation’s travel, tourism, and hospitality industries want America’s borders wide open. In other words, the former INS official contends, the nation’s security is being compromised in the name of trade.

© 2007 AgapePress all rights reserved.