Category Archives: Foreign Policy

UPDATED: McCain’s Idea Of A Spending Cut

Britain, Conservatism, Debt, Foreign Policy, Government, John McCain

How serious are Republicans about revolutionary cuts in state spending? John McCain serious.

McCain’s idea of “spending cuts,” just articulated to Fox News’ Shepard Smith, is cutting National Public Radio loose, and doing away with earmarks. I doubt these will cover a day’s interest payment on the national debt.

McCain’s notion of heeding the voter: securing the borders and reforming, not repealing, ObamaCare. Remind me again why movement conservatives betrayed J. D. Hayworth, who ought to have beaten Senator John McCain in the Arizona GOP primary.

Contrast McCain’s worse-than-futile slashes to the state with the reductions the British have begun to make.

BBC News: “Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled the biggest UK spending cuts for decades, with welfare, councils and police budgets all hit.”

A “19% average cuts to departmental budgets,” as well cutting “higher education spending by 40%, flood defences by 15% and sport England and UK Sport by 30%”—this is better than increasing spending as we are. Of course, price controls, such as on rail fares, are being tinkered with, namely “allowed to increase by 3% above RPI inflation from 2012.”

No doubt, certain cuts in the UK are an illusion, to be replaced by other, slightly modified programs. But again: better to fire 500,000 state workers than to hire 1.4 million census stalkers.

Prick up your ears when you hear promises to dismantle the IRS, the Department of Education, and to recall ALL troops, and the installations erected to satisfy their needs, from the over 100 countries in which they are stationed. That’ll be a modest beginning.

UPDATED: As to “Fair Tax,” campaigned for by the likes of Mike Huckabee and liberventionist Neal Boortz. When these two are right, it is only by accident. So you’re safe opposing most of their pet issues. I don’t like the “Fair Tax.” Granted, a tax on consumption is only an indirect tax on income.

Here’s Ron Paul:

A: We have to cut spending. You can’t get rid of the income tax if you don’t get rid of some spending. But, you know, if you got rid of the income tax today you’d have about as much revenue as we had 10 years ago, and the size of government wasn’t all that bad 10 years ago. There are sources of revenues other than the income tax. You have tariff, excise taxes, user fees, highway fees. So, so there’s still a lot of money. But the real problem is spending. But, you know, we lived a long time in this country without an income tax. Up until 1913 we didn’t have it.

Q: But if you eliminate the income tax, do you know how much lost revenue that would be?

A: A lot.

Q: Over a trillion dollars.

A: That’s good.

But since I have been called a Pollyanna, let me say this: the 16th is “The Number of The Beast”; it needs to be abolished. Taxation is immoral and naturally illicit. But given that, realistically, the state will not so do, a a flat, low tax is a pragmatic solution. Let the poor set the rate. The Russians have a low flat tax. As Dan Mitchell reports, “The former communists running Russia apparently understand tax policy better than the buffoons in charge of U.S. tax policy. Not only does Russia have a 13 percent flat tax, but the government has just announced it will eliminate the capital gains taxA pure flat tax would preclude any capital gains tax.

The Fair Tax our local buffoons propose is prohibitive.

UPDATED: McCain's Idea Of A Spending Cut

Britain, Conservatism, Debt, Foreign Policy, Government, John McCain

How serious are Republicans about revolutionary cuts in state spending? John McCain serious.

McCain’s idea of “spending cuts,” just articulated to Fox News’ Shepard Smith, is cutting National Public Radio loose, and doing away with earmarks. I doubt these will cover a day’s interest payment on the national debt.

McCain’s notion of heeding the voter: securing the borders and reforming, not repealing, ObamaCare. Remind me again why movement conservatives betrayed J. D. Hayworth, who ought to have beaten Senator John McCain in the Arizona GOP primary.

Contrast McCain’s worse-than-futile slashes to the state with the reductions the British have begun to make.

BBC News: “Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled the biggest UK spending cuts for decades, with welfare, councils and police budgets all hit.”

A “19% average cuts to departmental budgets,” as well cutting “higher education spending by 40%, flood defences by 15% and sport England and UK Sport by 30%”—this is better than increasing spending as we are. Of course, price controls, such as on rail fares, are being tinkered with, namely “allowed to increase by 3% above RPI inflation from 2012.”

No doubt, certain cuts in the UK are an illusion, to be replaced by other, slightly modified programs. But again: better to fire 500,000 state workers than to hire 1.4 million census stalkers.

Prick up your ears when you hear promises to dismantle the IRS, the Department of Education, and to recall ALL troops, and the installations erected to satisfy their needs, from the over 100 countries in which they are stationed. That’ll be a modest beginning.

UPDATED: As to “Fair Tax,” campaigned for by the likes of Mike Huckabee and liberventionist Neal Boortz. When these two are right, it is only by accident. So you’re safe opposing most of their pet issues. I don’t like the “Fair Tax.” Granted, a tax on consumption is only an indirect tax on income.

Here’s Ron Paul:

A: We have to cut spending. You can’t get rid of the income tax if you don’t get rid of some spending. But, you know, if you got rid of the income tax today you’d have about as much revenue as we had 10 years ago, and the size of government wasn’t all that bad 10 years ago. There are sources of revenues other than the income tax. You have tariff, excise taxes, user fees, highway fees. So, so there’s still a lot of money. But the real problem is spending. But, you know, we lived a long time in this country without an income tax. Up until 1913 we didn’t have it.

Q: But if you eliminate the income tax, do you know how much lost revenue that would be?

A: A lot.

Q: Over a trillion dollars.

A: That’s good.

But since I have been called a Pollyanna, let me say this: the 16th is “The Number of The Beast”; it needs to be abolished. Taxation is immoral and naturally illicit. But given that, realistically, the state will not so do, a a flat, low tax is a pragmatic solution. Let the poor set the rate. The Russians have a low flat tax. As Dan Mitchell reports, “The former communists running Russia apparently understand tax policy better than the buffoons in charge of U.S. tax policy. Not only does Russia have a 13 percent flat tax, but the government has just announced it will eliminate the capital gains taxA pure flat tax would preclude any capital gains tax.

The Fair Tax our local buffoons propose is prohibitive.

Updated: The "Blessings" Of Bush Ongoing In Iraq

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism

The heyday for Iraq’s Christian community was under Saddam Hussein, when “Catholics made up 2.89 percent of Iraq’s population in 1980. By 2008,” thanks to the Bush pig, “they were merely 0.89 percent.” Iraq’s “dwindling Christian community,” “whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries,” has suffered a terrible loss today.

“Militants seized a Baghdad church during evening Mass, held the congregation hostage and triggered a raid by Iraqi security forces. The bloodbath left at least 58 people dead and 78 wounded — nearly everyone inside.”

Judging from the outcome of the “rescue” raid led by the Iraqi security forces, the latter took almost as much care to avoid casualties as the militants themselves. We trained those Iraqis well, now didn’t we?

If you think Americans are capable of changing the fundamental disregard for the sanctity of human life, endemic among Muslims in that part of the world—you’re an idiot.

UPDATE: Here are some of the headlines coming out of Iraq, via Antiwar.com:

21 Bombs Across Iraqi Capital: At Least 110 Killed

Church Massacre Another Blow for Iraqi Christians
Torture Orders Were Part of US Sectarian War Strategy
Iraqis Fear al-Qaeda Revival After Church Siege
Tuesday: 117 Iraqis Killed, 322 Wounded

But what of those ink-stains digits? Democracy is a mess of pottage. It does nothing to safeguard what matters: life, liberty and property.

UPDATED: Tea Party Must Go To War With The War Party (Abu Ghraib à la Afghanistan)

Debt, Economy, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, War

Ending the warfare state is the only ray of hope for down-and-out, indebted America. With laser-like precision, Pat Buchanan zeroes in on the tack the tea party must take if it is to tackle the federal-induced “deficit-debt crisis, a national debt nearing 100 percent of gross domestic product and a deficit of 10 percent of GDP.” There is only “one place where a bipartisan majority may be found for major spending cuts: defense and the empire, the warfare state.”

“After Iraq and Afghanistan,” writes Buchanan, in “Tea Party vs. War Party?”, “the American people are not going to give the establishment and War Party a free hand in foreign policy. Every patriot will do what is necessary and pay what is needed to defend his country. But national security is one thing, empire security another.”

There is another matter I have raised in “Statism Starts With You!” and other recent columns, and it is “America’s fondness for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which combined, account for close to half of the federal government’s budget.” “Only 7 percent of the country will consider slashing the first two welfare programs. And a mere eleven percent of those living in the ‘Land of the Free’ are prepared to pare down Medicaid. Keep the government out of my Medicare!”

For a lack of any other viable option for stalling State spending, the Tea Party must position itself in opposition to Obama’s volitional and inherited wars; ignore Mr. Hannity’s nagging about “Empire security,” and preach and proselytize about the end of Empire.

If ever there was a religious cause, ending America’s military forays abroad is it.

UPDATE: Abu Ghraib à la Afghanistan. You remember the pornographic pictorials from Abu Ghraib prison, starring some sadistic and slutty servicemen and women? Well, GI JOE and GI HO have relocated. And they will continue to do their thing until the US government stops unleashing them in other countries. (Place them on the US-Mexico border where they can scare some gangsters their own size—drug cartel members—if that’s not posse comitatus.)

HERE goes:

Those who have seen the photos say they are grisly: soldiers beside newly killed bodies, decaying corpses and severed fingers.
The dozens of photos, described in interviews and in e-mails and military documents obtained by The Associated Press, were seized by Army investigators and are a crucial part of the case against five soldiers accused of killing three Afghan civilians earlier this year.