Day: September 3, 2008

Anarchists And The Convention

Police arrested protesters near the St. Paul convention site this afternoon and blocked off pedestrian and car traffic into the city center for at least an hour.

While the remains of a peaceful protest parade swirled around one closed road after another, growing increasingly frustrated that they weren’t able to get back to their houses and cars, one officer told me that “anarchists” a few blocks away had been causing trouble — throwing bricks and breaking people’s property.

Anarchists? Please stop it! Because a person wears a black shirt with a large red “A” on it, does not an anarchist make. The truth is that a vast majority of anarchist, at all times and places, have opposed violence as morally repugnant and counter-productive. It is a folk myth for ill informed morons that anarchists are wild eyed bombers with no opinions, just an insane urge to destroy.

This shows the ignorance of those who cannot understand a concept so they must turn it into something evil and violent. They are wrong! They are lying! And they are ignorant!

McCain’s Tax Plan And How It Will Work

At least this is how the WSJ sees the plan and its outcome.

First, he proposes a package of tax incentives that will create jobs and raise earnings by inducing firms to invest more in the U.S. Second, he is strongly committed to blocking any increase in tax rates while doubling the personal exemptions for families with children, which will reduce the tax burden on working Americans. Third, he proposes a new, refundable tax credit that will increase health-care coverage, reduce the cost of health care, and provide more funds for families and individuals to purchase health care.

Here’s how the three components of Sen. McCain’s tax plan will work in practice.

To create jobs, Mr. McCain will reduce the corporate tax rate — now at 35% the second highest among all industrial countries — to one that doesn’t penalize firms for doing business here. To encourage small businesses to expand, he will fight against higher tax rates on their income.

To increase wages, Mr. McCain will provide incentives to raise productivity, which leads to higher wages. To increase productivity, he will provide incentives for developing and applying new technologies by expanding the tax credit for research and development, and by making that credit permanent.

More savings and investment in businesses also raise productivity. Mr. McCain will stimulate saving by keeping tax rates low on the returns to saving in the form of dividends and capital gains. He will also allow faster depreciation of assets, which encourages investment. And he will strengthen the incentive to save by reducing the maximum estate tax rate, with a substantial, untaxed exemption.

This part of the plan is what is most interesting and we will see if he is elected.

Tax revenues will increase robustly over the next few years with Mr. McCain’s overall tax strategy as the economy grows — even with conservative economic growth assumptions. And by maintaining strong control over the growth of government spending, Mr. McCain will bring the budget into balance. His long record of fighting against excessive government spending, his plans to veto earmarks and reverse the spending binge of the past few years, and his strong commitment to balancing the budget can make this goal a reality.

Iraqi Army Readies For Action Against Kurds

Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga forces are bracing for conflict in the disputed city of Khanaqin in the most serious threat of clashes between Arabs and Kurds since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

A delegation flew from Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish regional government, to Baghdad at the weekend to try to resolve the crisis. The two main Kurdish parties are allied and form part of Iraq’s coalition government.

However, Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan region, and leader of the Kurdish Democratic party, said Iraq was still living under the influence of Saddam’s regime and the central government was not serious about sharing power with Kurds. He claimed many military decisions were made without consultations with General Babakir Zebari, a Kurd who is the Iraqi army’s chief of staff.

The crisis has grown since July when the Iraqi government ordered peshmerga forces to withdraw to Kurdistan from Diyala. It also told the two main Kurdish parties to move out of the numerous government buildings in Diyala which they had taken over when Saddam’s regime fell.

THis could be the start of the “battle” for Iraq by Iraqis.

More Absurd News

I do not usually comment on the crap from LaLa Land but from time to time there are just a few times that I cannot resist.

I guess if one must be addicted, then this is the one to choose.

X Files” star David Duchovny’s announcement that was he was in rehab for sex addiction sparked a lot of rumors. One of them was that he’d been caught having an affair with his tennis instructor (a woman) and that he was undergoing rehab to save his marriage.

A conversation with Duchovny’s friend that this has something to do with an addiction to pornography, probably on the Internet. It’s the sex equivalent of a gambling addiction, where the person is just hopelessly trapped in chat rooms.

Now for the most dumb.

THE extent of troubled pop star Amy Winehouse’s drug use has been finally revealed and it is feared she has suffered brain damage.

“She is in need of years of psychiatry and medical treatment if she has a hope,” a friend said.

“The future is bleak, bleak, bleak.”

The details of Winehouse’s drug use was reported in The Sun newspaper in the United Kingdom.

Her first overdose in August last year was from a cocktail of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, ketamine and crystal methamphetamine (commonly known as ice).

Brain Damage?  Ya Think!

Today In Labor History

03 September

National Association of Letter Carriers formed – 1894

Some 300 musicians working in Chicago movie houses strike to protest their impending replacement by talking movies – 1928

Labor Day postage stamp is issued, the first US stamp honoring workers. It features detail from a tile mosaic at the new AFL-CIO building in Washington, D.C. – 1956

Twenty-five workers die, unable to escape a fire at the Imperial Poultry processing plant in Hamlet, NC.  Managers had locked fire doors to prevent the theft of chicken nuggets.  The plant had operated for 11 years without a single safety inspection – 1991

Alaskan Independence Party

Tonight, Sarah Palin will be nominated as the Republican Party’s choice for vice president of the United States.

But back home, she has cheered the work of a tiny party that long has pushed for a statewide vote on whether Alaska should secede from those same United States. And her husband, Todd, was a member of the party for seven years.

“Keep up the good work,” Sarah Palin told members of the Alaskan Independence Party in a videotaped speech to their convention six months ago in Fairbanks. She wished the party luck on what she called its “inspiring convention.”

The Alaskan Independence Party, founded in 1978, initially promoted “the Alaskan independence movement.” But now, according to its website, “its primary goal is merely a vote on secession.”
For all but two months from 1995 to 2002, the governor’s husband was registered as an Alaskan Independence Party member, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.

With McCain’s campaign emphasizing patriotism — his latest slogan is “Country First” — the Palins’ links to a party founded by the late secessionist gold miner Joe Vogler could prove awkward.
Leaders of the party say many of its 13,681 registered members have joined out of frustration over restrictions that the federal government has placed on the use of its vast land holdings in Alaska. Beyond the secession vote, the party also advocates gun rights, home schooling and abolition of property taxes.

A question-and-answer page on its website asks, “Aren’t most Alaskan Independence Party members a bunch of radicals and kooks?”

“The party has its share of individualists, in the grand Alaskan tradition,” the answer says. “No longer a fringe party, the AIP is a viable third party with a serious mission and qualified candidates for elected offices.”

Repub Convention–Day 2

First, day 1 was a bust–Gustav peed on their parade. The Delegates had to forego the McCain-Palin love fest and play a different political card–sympathy. Mrs McCain and Bush asked the people to give and give some more to help the victims of Gustav.

DAY 2–or as I call it Pee-Pee Day, Palin and Patriotism and did I mention he was a POW? OMG! Fred Thompson lives! And he was awake and speaking. Lieberman was–well–Lieberman. If you listen to these guys talk about Palin, one would get the impression that the convention was a bout her and that she has more “executive” experience than even her running mate.

The media coverage was the usual crap. But one thing that was different was that there was a plethora of Repub surrogates telling the world all about McCain’s plan. It was different from the Dem Convention in so much that the media allowed just about as many Republicans to voice their positions as Dems at St. Paul the Repubs get a captive audience.

I have one question for the Repubs.  Has anyone told them the economy is in the tank?  Not one of the speakers mentioned it in their speeches, but flag waving was the order of the day.

I always enjoy it when I here people talk about the media being in the tank for Obama.