OK... I'm in a much better mood today!
Saw Glenn Friggin' Campbell at the Bergan PAC last night! Awesome show! Very emotional. (This is Mr. Campbell's farewell tour; tragically, he's suffering from Alzheimer's.)
God bless ya, Glenn!
While this isn't the video from last night's performance, it reflects part of last night's show. Glenn's kids are up there with him and you can just see how much this means to them... and how much it means to him.
Again... this isn't the review of last night's performance, but it reflects what Mary and I experienced.
Oh... and last but not least... a shout-out to my friends at Pixto y Tapas of Englewood Cliffs, N.J.!
These guys are the best!
5 comments:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300769/baby-budget-hawks-gop-michael-tanner
The conventional wisdom...
* ...OF MORONS, FOR MORONS, BY MORONS...
...pushed for very different reasons by both Republicans and Democrats, is that Republicans in Congress, controlled by radical tea-partiers, have been slashing government spending.
(*SNORT*) (*TRYING NOT TO PUKE IN MY MOUTH*)
Thus it becomes a little hard to understand how, in the few short months since last year’s debt-ceiling deal, the federal debt has increased by more than $1.5 trillion, roughly $13,000 per household.
(*NOD*)
If Republicans are such great budget cutters, how come we continue to spend more, run more deficits, and accumulate more debt?
(*NOD*)
The latest evidence suggests that it is because, contrary to conventional wisdom, Republicans still aren’t such radical budget hawks after all.
* "LATEST EVIDENCE...?" WHAT'S THIS BOZO TALKING ABOUT...??? WE'VE KNOWN THIS FROM THE GET-GO!
For example, the latest Club for Growth scorecard suggests that, on the whole, Republicans in this congress have actually been less fiscally responsible than those in past congresses. For [FY] 2011, the average Republican received a weighted score of 69.5% out of 100%. That’s far short of the 86.3% average score in [FY] 2010, and it hardly suggests a tea-party-led wave of austerity.
* BOEHNER HAS BEEN A DISASTER AS SPEAKER!
Forty Republicans received scores of 90% or higher, and nine — Representatives Amash (Mich.), Chaffetz (Utah), Flake (Ariz.), Franks (Ariz.), Graves (Ga.), Huelskamp (Kan.), Jordan (Ohio), Labrador (Idaho), and Lamborn (Colo.) — received perfect scores of 100%.
However...
(*SIGH*) HERE IT COMES...
...25 Republicans had scores below 50%.
In fact six Republicans – Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), Diaz-Balart (Fla.), McKinley (W.Va.), Smith (N.J.), Young (Alaska), and LoBiando (N.J.) — had scores worse than those of some Democrats, such as Dan Boren (Okla.).
On an annualized basis, Republicans in the House proposed spending increases of $5.3 billion and cuts of $135 billion. Thus, if every one of their proposals had passed, total federal spending would have been reduced by $130.2 billion, which is 3.6% of this year’s projected spending. That would still have left us with a budget deficit this year of $1.17 trillion.
* FORGET WHAT THEY "PROPOSED." ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. THE HOUSE COULD HAVE KEPT SPENDING AT LAST YEAR'S LEVEL. THEY DIDN'T. THAT'S THE ONLY FACT THAT MATTERS.
Recent weeks have also seen Republicans in the House vote to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, an example of corporate welfare if there ever was one, and abandon the sequester for cuts in military spending.
Senate Republicans also agreed on a highway bill that hikes the deficit in the long run.
(*BANGING MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL*)
None of this suggests that Republicans were not generally more fiscally conservative than Democrats. The average Democrat score on the Club for Growth Scorecard was only 10.95 out of 100. All but three Democrats in the House scored below every Republican, and six Democrats received a score of 0. The average Democrat proposed net spending increases of $496 billion — almost half a trillion dollars in new net spending. Not a single Democrat voted for the Ryan budget, or for any of the lower-spending alternatives.
But better is not good enough.
Unless Washington gets spending under control, we are headed toward a debt crisis of Greek proportions, and time is running out. It’s time for Republicans to live up to the hype and get truly serious about cutting spending.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300752/defending-tax-cuts-rich-thomas-sowell
* BY THOMAS SOWELL
Democrats have been having a field day with the cry of “tax cuts for the rich” — for which Republicans seem to have no reply.
Democrats made the same arguments back in the 1920s, and the Republicans then not only had a reply, but one that eventually carried the day, when the top tax rate was brought down from 73% to 24%.
What was the difference then? Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon took the trouble to articulate the case for lower tax rates, in articles that appeared in popular publications, using plain language that ordinary people could understand.
Seldom do Republican leaders today even attempt to do any such thing.
In 1924, the ideas from these articles were collected in a book which Mellon titled “Taxation: The People’s Business.” That book has recently been reprinted by the University of Minnesota Law Library. Today’s Republicans would do well to get a copy of Mellon’s book, which shows how demagoguery about “tax cuts for the rich” can be exposed for the nonsense that it is. (People in the media could also benefit by seeing how the “tax cuts for the rich” demagoguery collapses like a house of cards when you subject it to logic and evidence.)
Those who argue that “the rich” should pay a higher tax rate, and that the revenue this would bring in could be used to reduce the deficit, assume that higher tax rates equal higher tax revenues. But they do not. Secretary Mellon pointed out that previously the government “received substantially the same revenue from high incomes with a 13% surtax as it received with a 65% surtax.” Higher tax rates do not [necessarily] mean higher tax revenues.
* REPEAT: HIGHER TAX RATES DO NOT NECESSARILY MEAN HIGHER TAX REVENUES!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
High tax rates on high incomes, Mellon said, lead many of those who earn such incomes to withdraw their money “from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities” or otherwise find ways to avoid receiving income in taxable forms.
That is even easier to do today than in Andrew Mellon’s time.
The very same liberals who complain that Mitt Romney — among thousands of others — puts his money in the Cayman Islands nevertheless act as if raising the tax rates automatically raises tax revenues. It can instead drive money out of the country and drive jobs out of the country with it.
The United States has long been a place where foreigners from around the world have sent their money to be invested, more than offsetting the money that Americans invested abroad. But, in recent years, the net flow of investment has been out of America to places overseas that don’t tax as much.
Mellon cited statistics that showed the opposite of what the high-tax advocates claimed. Although incomes in general were rising from 1916 to 1921, the taxable income of people earning $300,000 and up dropped by about four-fifths. That didn’t mean that “the rich” were becoming poor. It meant that they had arranged to receive their incomes in forms that were not taxable.
Mellon asked where the money of these high-income earners went. He answered: “There is no doubt of the fact that much of it went into tax-exempt securities.” (In today’s global economy, much of it can also easily be sent overseas — much more easily than workers can go overseas to get the jobs this money creates in other countries.)
After Mellon finally succeeded in getting Congress to lower the top tax rate from 73% to 24%, the government actually received more tax revenues at the lower rate than it had at the higher rate. Moreover, it received a higher proportion of all income taxes from the top income earners than before.
Something similar happened in later years, after tax rates were cut under presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and G. W. Bush.
The record is clear. Barack Obama admitted during the 2008 election campaign that he understood that raising tax rates does not necessarily mean raising tax revenues.
* AND THEN HE SAID HE DIDN'T CARE! (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Why, then, is he pushing so hard for higher tax rates on “the rich” this election year?
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Because class-warfare politics can increase votes for his reelection, even if it raises no more tax revenues for the government.
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/05/22/morning-bell-the-danger-of-article-82-and-obamas-latest-treaty/?roi=echo3-12082613923-8715050-fe61b87bf982e35364c084c89355945c&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Back in 1982, President Ronald Reagan decided not to sign a treaty known as “Law of the Sea” (LOST), a United Nations convention that would raid America’s treasury for billions of dollars, then redistribute that wealth to the rest of the world by an international bureaucracy headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica.
[T]he Obama Administration has revived that treaty, and [today] Senator John Kerry (D-MA) will hold hearings designed to illustrate its supposed benefits and generate support for its ratification.
Without a doubt, Reagan’s decision should stand, and LOST should remain relegated to the trash bin of history.
For more than 200 years before LOST was adopted in 1982 and for 30 years since then, the U.S. Navy has successfully protected America’s maritime interests regardless of the fact that the United States has not signed on to the treaty.
LOST is not without consequences...
One of the more nefarious and insidious of its provisions is Article 82, which requires the United States to forfeit royalties generated from oil and gas development on the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles – an area known as the “extended continental shelf.” That money, which one estimate says could be worth many billions, if not trillions of dollars, would go to the International Seabed Authority, a new international bureaucracy created by the treaty and based in Jamaica. Heritage’s Steven Groves explains that from there, America’s money could be shipped to the Middle East, Africa, China, and even state sponsors of terror:
"LOST directs that the revenue be distributed to 'developing States' (such as Somalia, Burma … you get the picture) and “peoples who have not attained full independence” (such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization … hey, don’t they sponsor terrorism?). The assembly – the “supreme organ” of the International Seabed Authority in which the United States has a single vote to cast – has the final say regarding the distribution of America’s transmogrified “international” royalties. The assembly may vote to distribute royalties to undemocratic, despotic or brutal governments in Belarus, China or Zimbabwe – all members of LOST. Perhaps those dollars will go to regimes that are merely corrupt; 13 of the world’s 20 most corrupt nations, according to Transparency International, are parties to LOST. Even Cuba and Sudan, both considered state sponsors of terrorism, could receive dollars fresh from the U.S. Treasury."
In addition to shipping America’s money overseas to unsavory recipients, LOST could have other negative consequences, as well, by exposing U.S. industry and manufacturing to baseless international lawsuits. In fact, environmental activists and international legal academics are actively exploring the potential of using international litigation against the United States to advance their agendas. And for those who say LOST is a tool for mediating international disputes, take a look at the Philippines, which signed on to the treaty and yet today is finding itself browbeaten by China and its claims in the South China Sea.
If America truly wants to preserve its rights on the sea, then it needs to bolster the one tool that has guaranteed those rights throughout history — a strong U.S. Navy. (Unfortunately, under President Obama’s watch, the United States is seeing its fleet diminished in size and ability.)
A lone piece of paper will not defend America’s interests on the sea, and neither will transferring billions of dollars to an international authority in Jamaica for redistribution the world over.
LOST should not be ratified and signed, and instead Washington should turn its attention to ensuring that the U.S. Navy has the resources it needs to protect America’s interests on the high seas.
http://public.cq.com/docs/weeklyreport/weeklyreport-000004090642.html?ref=corg
Amid all the campaign chatter...one subject has drawn surprisingly little attention: the Afghanistan War.
That subject is notably absent from the congressional campaign trail, even though more than 100 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year.
* MORE THAN 100 U.S. SOLDIERS HAVE BEEN KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN SO FAR JUST THIS YEAR ALONE!
Tens of thousands of American troops are still deployed there, and the United States is spending $300 million each day trying to kill Taliban fighters and their allies.
* $300 MILLION SQUANDERED EACH DAY... EACH DAY!
Rarely has such an active war been so far off the national election radar.
When a central California newspaper, the Hanford Sentinel, did a roundup last month of where candidates for the newly created 21st congressional district stood on the issues, the editors posed questions about taxes, job creation, health care and energy.
Afghanistan didn’t make the cut.
In Arkansas, two out of the three Republicans running to fill retiring Democratic Rep. Mike Ross’ seat served in the military in Afghanistan, but the candidates have been talking almost exclusively about taxes and government spending.
Their stance on the war in Afghanistan didn’t even merit a mention in a recent AP feature story on the race.
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