Either Katie Couric is auditioning for a role in Something About Mary 2 or the birds just left her a present on her $1000 Frédéric Fekkai hairdo.
Isn’t live TV awesome! This is the best liveshot gone awry since Michelle Kosinski’s rowboat appearence. None of this however can top Laura Bush giving little Katie the business for her anti-military bias.
If this story is true, and we have evidence of what Saddam did with his WMDs, that would be very, very good news for everyone. Well, almost everyone. The lack of WMDs is an ongoing embarrassment to the administration. The burden of proof is on them to deliver. So far, they haven’t. Maybe, just maybe, they can.
Congress’s Secret Saddam Tapes
BY ELI LAKE – Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 7, 2006
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is studying 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Loftus will make the recordings available to the public on February 17 at the annual meeting of the Intelligence Summit, of which he is president. On the organization’s Web site, Mr. Loftus is quoted as promising that the recordings “will be able to provide a few definitive answers to some very important – and controversial – weapons of mass destruction questions.” Contacted yesterday by The New York Sun, Mr. Loftus would only say that he delivered a CD of the recordings to a representative of the committee, and the following week the committee announced that it was reopening the investigation into weapons of mass destruction.
The audio recordings are part of new evidence the House intelligence committee is piecing together that has spurred Mr. Hoekstra to reopen the question of whether Iraq had the biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons American inspectors could not turn up. President Bush called off the hunt for those weapons last year and has conceded that America has yet to find evidence of the stockpiles.
As you would expect, the best commentary on this is found in the blogosphere right now. Tom Blumer at BizzyBlog has had it with the ‘no WMDs’ crowd, especially those that expouse those views from, oh, I don’t know…the pulpit during funerals.
Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom rightly credits Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard for his work on this isuse. He has also has a great analysis of the potential fallout,
the WMD question may finally get the new airing it deserves; and if it turns out that Saddam was indeed able to get the weapons hidden away before the coalitionâ??s (and Congressionally sanctioned) â??rushâ? to war (how many months warning did we give him, anyway?â??144 or some such? Câ??mon. Is that really enough time to move weapons caches?), then it will be the liberal Democrats who are put on the defensive, and deservedly so. WMD or no, the idea that the entire world intelligence community was mistakenâ??but that only George Bush was lying about their existenceâ??has been a shameful narrative driven by a party whose leadership has permitted rhetorically excesses that would make Jesse Jackson blush.
A personal story and a question for Democrats
First my story,
I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. King over MLK weekend in 1999. I was working for an organization that sponsored events featuring high profile speakers engaging in roundtable discussions. We held our event on Saturday, and the MLK service at Ebenezer Church was the next morning. I spent a some quality time that weekend with the guest speakers including Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ambassador Andrew Young and especially Nobel winner John Hume. What a great man. Anyway, Mrs. King was also a roundtable participant. I said hello and exchanged a few quick pleasantries. What I remember most was her quiet dignity. The way she sat, listened to people talk. The way she was pleasant throughout the entire day as an endless stream approached her to say hello. Just a classy woman, that is what I remember about her.
I think most Americans feel that way about Mrs. King whether they met her or not.
Now my questionâ?¦
How do you think these absurd partisan funerals sit with the vast majority of Americans?
Photo via ExposeTheLeft via Free Republic
Welcome to the big leagues. Barak Obama has just received his first official beat down as a United States Senator, and the beauty of it, it was delivered at the hands, or pen, of John McCain.
We all know how beloved McCain is when he is bashing Republicans. The MSM trips over themselves to use McCain to demonstrate a “split” in the party, or to expose the party as “too radical” and of course, they call him a “maverick”. Well, let’s see what they are saying about him today now that he has given Barak Obama a verbal beating and sent him to his room.
Dear Senator Obama:
I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadershipâ??s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. Iâ??m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I wonâ??t make the same mistake again.
It gets better from here, read the whole thing.
I will be checking the newswires all day to see if the salivating dogs in the MSM are running towards the Maverick McCain with their microphones today. Somehow I doubt it.
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SUNDAY AM UPDATE: Boston Herald: Blogger, Army call pic truce: Writer says ownership issue resolved
Yon, who all but accused the Army of trying to swipe ownership of the heartbreaking photo of a U.S. GI cradling the dying girl, credited a story in the Boston Herald and an online blogger crusade – led by local radio-show host Kevin Whalen via his punditreview.com Internet site – for pressuring the Army to settle.
Michael Yon will be our special guest on Pundit Review Radio this Sunday evening at 8pm EST to discuss this entire affair. You can stream the show live at WRKO and call to talk with Michael toll free at 877-469-4322.
ORIGINAL POST
What we have here is the ability to communicate! Picking up on a couple of MSM stories, bloggers rallied behind Michael Yon in his copyright battle with the US Army in a major way over the past 24 hours.
Michael was in a stalemate for seven months, getting nowhere, until Boston Herald reporter and fellow blogger Jay Fitzgerald as well as the Southtown Free Press’ Dan Lavoie, covered the story. Their MSM reporting brought this to the attention of the blogosphere. From there, blogs like this one and those listed below picked up the story and started a blog swarm, sending hundreds of emails to those in a position to make the right decision on Michael’s behalf.
From Michael Yon, Saturday, February 4th, 2006
Copyright Dispute Resolved
Thousands of readers might have learned about it from Jay Fitzgerald�??s piece in Tuesday�??s Boston Herald. Maybe it was the article Dan Lavoie wrote for last Sunday�??s Southtown Free Press, or the press release issued by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Or when Kevin Whalen at Pundit Review called for blogger arms in an intransigent dispute with the Army over intellectual property rights. The growing volume of these voices gained the attention of people who could resolve the conflict.
The dispute over the unattributed and unauthorized distribution of my photographs has been resolved in principle to the satisfaction of the involved parties. The dispute had been exacerbated by Army lawyers, but once the matter was brought forefront and examined by Brigadier General Brooks, Chief of Public Affairs, it was resolved by another more senior Army attorney. At the end of the day, the Army did the right thing. I greatly appreciate the efforts of those involved, including the blogosphere and Brigadier General Brooks, whose determined attention and immediate action removed the obstacle.
This is a tremendous victory for Michael personally, and all of us collectively. Special thanks should be given to those rare MSM reporters who actually get the blogosphere, Jay Fitzgerald and Dan Lavoie, as well as the big traffic sites like Wizbang, InstaPundit, Michelle Malkin, Mudville Gazette and Pajamas for linking and giving this effort the critical mass it needed.
Here is a list of blogs who rallied behing Michael and achieved this stunning turnaround! Congratulations to one and all.
Pundit Review; Instapundit; Mudville Gazette; Wizbang; Econoblog; Michelle Malkin; Pajamas Media; Free Republic; Blackfive ; Whodathunk;
Random Bits of Pomposity; The Conservative Spread; Home School Blogger; Done With Mirrors; Just Some Poor Schmuck; Anton Traversa; Just Barking Mad; Presto Agiato; Small Town Veteran; Rockets Brain; Literal Barrage;
Sunset Streams; Chapomatic; ; Oriental Redneck; Almost Average; Daniel in Broookline; Noola Beulah; Fun Murphy�??s; The Art Law Blog; Volokh Conspiracy; QNotes; Not Exactly Rocket Science
The ubiquitous argument from the wealth redistributionist-lefties is always that tax cuts primarily benefit the “rich” and will result in decreased tax revenue which will “increase the deficit.”
I wonder how much more empirical evidence so-called economists such as Robert Rubin and Paul Krugman need before they actually grasp a concept that any first year 17-year old college economics student should be able to grasp which is that supply side tax cuts are the best way to generate economic growth, create jobs, and increase tax dollars to the treasury.
As part of Bush’s 2003 investment tax cut package, capital gains was reduced from 20% to 15%.
Kennedy, Shumer, and Clinton all predicted economic disaster:
Not even close. Here’s what actually happened. This 25% reduction in the tax penalty on stock and other asset sales triggered a doubling of capital gains realizations, to $539 billion in 2005 from $269 billion in 2002. One influence was the increase in stock values over that time, thanks in part to the higher after-tax return on capital induced by the tax cuts.
Why did this occur? For the same reason tax cuts always spur economic growth and increased tax revenues:
But another cause for the windfall was almost certainly the “unlocking” effect from investors selling their existing asset holdings in order to realize some of their profits and pay taxes at the lower rate. They could then turn around and buy new assets, hoping for higher rates of return. This “unlocking” promotes the efficiency of capital markets by redirecting investment into new and higher value-added companies.
As for tax revenues to the federeal treasury to fund all the “earmarks”:
It also yields a windfall for the Treasury. In 2002, the year before the tax cut, capital gains tax liabilities were $49 billion at the 20% rate. They rose slightly to $51 billion in 2003, then surged to $71 billion in 2004, and were estimated by CBO to have reached $80 billion last year — all paid at the lower 15% rate. In short, the lower rate yielded more revenue.
This is exactly why when President Bush called on Congress to make his tax cut permanent the Dems sat on their hands.
Either they are impervious to hard empirical economic data which has demonstrated the efectiveness of supply side tax cuts or the elites are actively rooting against the economy in their inexorable quest to regain political power in the 06′ elections.
What does it say that one political party can only achieve success when America is weak internationally and economically at home?