Doggone right with Mark Brighton

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August 06, 2007

Moonbats and a Tet offensive

The NY Times of July 30th had some extremely bad news for Carol Shea-Porter in the form of an op-ed piece written by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. Both of these gentlemen are from the Brookings Institute, which one could never accuse of harboring a conservative bias.

The column’s title said it all, “A War We Just Might Win.” After an 8 day fact finding tour in Iraq, they have concluded that the surge is working. In addition, they recommend that the troops should not be pulled out before the end of 2008.

Shea-Porter and her fellow travelers have not only embraced defeat; they have kissed it on both cheeks and raised the white flag of surrender. They routinely give those who vow to destroy us every hope of success. If the troop surge works, it puts her in an untenable position. What am I saying? She is already there.

Shea-Porter says she supports the troops and that her husband was in the military, so she understands their plight in having to follow, at the very least, “immoral” orders. But her actions demonstrate on a daily basis that her position requires that our troops be killed to prove that we face imminent defeat.

This has to make for awkward dinner conversation. “Yes, dear, I know you were a soldier, but if more of our troops die then we can get them out sooner.”

We do agree on one thing, Carol, that war is horrific and gut wrenching. But the enemy came looking for us and Spain and France and Denmark and England…

Now that there appears to be a real hope of stabilizing Iraq, you and your pals are left to hope for a Tet style offensive before the September report comes out. It makes my skin crawl.

I have only one suggestion, Carol. Don’t get the cider ready for your defeat celebration just yet.

Posted by Mark Brighton at 02:27 PM | Comments (22)

August 04, 2007

Hillary comes to town

Hillary came to town, and I was invited. My friends in talk radio had me prepared to witness a fire breathing she-devil. Well, she wasn’t. That is as close to a compliment Hillary is ever likely to get from this quarter, however.

The senator did not pull any punches, at least on taxation. She wants to tax us back into the Stone Age. She obviously did not name the middle class as the bearer of her taxation plan, but rather pointed to the big, bad, oil companies. She’s going to make them an offer they can’t refuse: either invest in alternate energy sources or she will tax their “windfall profits.”

Hillary’s statements were refreshingly forthright. One might be tempted to say that she was playing to a friendly crowd. In this age of YouTube there is no such thing. Anything any of us, let alone a major politician, says or does has the potential for immediate broadcast to the world. Her words may come back to bite her in the seat of her designer pants suit.

I always get a warm, fuzzy feeling when a political hack, Republican or Democrat, starts defining economic terms for their own use. What is a windfall profit? Hillary might say that like a pornographic image, she knows one when she sees one. She did make a fuzzy statement about not wanting these big, bad energy companies to use patent law too advantageously. What inventor wouldn’t just leap at such an offer? Talk about incentive!

Hillary didn’t discourage me. The audience did. They gave her a raucous round of applause when she proposed her tax. Here’s a news flash to the audience. No corporation has ever paid a tax. All taxes, including the employer’s portion of Social Security, get passed down to the consumers as the cost of doing business. The Clintons don’t pay taxes. You and I do.

The audience, while applauding, was stabbing itself in the back. I do not claim to be a genius in economics, but the lack of knowledge exhibited by the left of how the market works really gets me down.

Posted by Mark Brighton at 03:11 PM | Comments (2)