In Praise Of Jennifer Rubin

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by Smitty

You have to admire the courage of somebody who can assert

Herman Cain is having a tough time. He had a rocky debate. His campaign centerpiece, the 9-9-9 tax plan, is being skewered.

He had a rocky debate? Are you sure he didn’t debate Bullwinkle?Or, perhaps somebody about town with Ms. Rubin?What, precisely, was rocky? Any details? And who is skewering his 9-9-9 plan? Adolf Hitler? Adolf, it must be pointed out, was more worried about his girlfriend getting into the details of the 9-9-9 plan than he was worried about the plan itself.

So, one is left to wonder, Jennifer, what specific objections YOU have to the 9-9-9 plan:

9-9-9 Plan: Summary

  • Removes all payroll taxes and unites all tax payers
  • Provides the least incentive to evade taxes and the fewest opportunities to do so
  • Lifts a $430 billion dead-weight burden on the economy due to compliance, enforcement, collection, etc…
  • Is fair, simple, efficient, neutral, and transparent
  • Ends nearly all deductions and special interest favors
  • Features zero tax on capital gains and repatriated profits
  • Exports leave our shores without the Business Tax or the Sales Tax embedded in their cost, making them world class competitive. Imports are subject to the same taxation as domestically produced goods, leveling the playing field.
  • Lowest marginal rates on production
  • Kills the Death Tax
  • Allows immediate expensing of business investments
  • Eliminates double taxation of dividends
  • Increases capital formation which aids capital availability for small businesses
  • Increased capital per worker drives productivity and wage growth
  • Features a platform to launch properly structured Empowerment Zones to renew our inner cities
  • The pro-growth, pro-job, pro-export economic policies of the 9-9-9 PLAN equals a strong dollar policy

I’ll be honest: I haven’t worked all the math. I’m also in some agreement with Michele Bachmann: giving a new tax to DC is a joyless precedent. Herman himself may veto any mad Congress that wants to drop a 1 in front of the third 9 in the plan, but there are no guarantees for follow-on presidents.

Also, as a military chain-of-command aficionado, my preference is to empower the states more, and DC less, to rebuild the crumbled local-state-federal chain.

But let’s give the idea a little more credit than simply saying it’s being ‘skewered’. The plan as such hasn’t seen more than a minor paper cuts from a poor wee Washington Post-It. But such a brave Post-It.

Moammar Qaddafi Is Dead

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ABC News:

Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has been killed, Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril said today.
The flamboyant tyrant who terrorized his country and much of the world during his 42 years of despotic rule was reportedly cornered by insurgents in the town of Sirte, where Gadhafi was born and which was a stronghold of his supporters.
President Obama will make remarks at 2 p.m. this afternoon confirming and discussing Gadhafi’s death.
National Transition Council leaders said Gadhafi’s son, Motassim, was also killed though another son, Saif Al-Islam, fled Sirte in a convoy. Three of Gadhafi’s children are in Algeria, and NTC leaders say they will ask the neighboring country to send them back.
“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed,” Jibril said at a news conference in Tripoli.

Woke up this morning in Las Vegas and saw the news on TV, complete with video of a bloodied Qaddafy being hauled by rebels in the back of a pickup truck.

UPDATE:  The Washington Post: “Video on Arab TV stations shows Moammar Gadhafi was captured alive and wounded.”

UPDATE II: UK Mirror:

As the NATO strike on Gaddafi’s convoy hit the lead vehicles his aides started trying to exit from cars and escape on foot, realising the game was up.
Then as Gaddafi and several aides tried to run into the safety of a drainage ditch they were shot dead by rebel fighters pursuing them on foot.

UPDATE III: NewsMax has details of how Qaddafi was killed while attempting to escape from his hometown, Sirte:

Gadhafi’s only way out was a risky one – to pile into a convoy of vehicles and try to make a break for it.
They didn’t get very far. Less than three miles out, the five vehicles carrying [the ousted Libyan dictator] … came under sustained fire, initially from a Hellcat missile and then from French fighter jets.
Gadhafi and his bodyguards desperately tried to turn back into the besieged city … but it was a forlorn bid.
As the convoy became crippled the Mad Dog of the Desert made one final bid to save his life. He leaped from his car and into a 2ft. storm drain in Sirte’s District Two, on the far west of the city.
But he was soon spotted and dragged from his hiding place. Rebel soldiers say he begged for his life, urging them “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” but his pleas for mercy went unheeded.
The rebels killed him on the spot, shooting him once in the temple and in both legs.

And thus ends what began March 19 when NATO launched “Operation Odyssey Dawn.” For the first two months, the ragtag Libyan rebels seemed doomed to failure, and President Obama was harshly criticized here and elsewhere. Now that the mission has at last succeeded, congratulations are in order.

Herman Cain’s Day in Vegas

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LAS VEGAS, Nevada
Herman Cain spoke this afternoon at the Western Republican Leadership Conference here:

Earlier today, I went with Steve Foley of Citizens for Cain to a luncheon at Maggiano’s Little Italy hosted by the Republican Women of Las Vegas:

After Cain’s luncheon speech, he posed for photos with well-wishers while surrounded by the mob of photographers and TV cameras that follows him pretty much everywhere nowadays:

Ace Rips Herman Cain Pretty Good

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Remember the whole Gitmo-release thing with Wolf Blitzer yesterday? Ace really didn’t dig that at all:

He literally seems to be making it all up on the fly, and I mean all, so when he’s asked a question like this, all he knows about the situation is literally just that which was contained in the question.

You can read the rest. It’s pretty brutal, and this is the kind of situation — a blunder that exposes him to lacerating criticism from conservatives — that Cain must avoid henceforth if he wants to be taken seriously as a contender.

A Venn Diagram Might Be Helpful

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LAS VEGAS, Nevada
Last night at the CNN debate, somebody said, “Hey, have you seen Erik Telford?”

“No, is he here?”

“Yeah. He was on Twitter asking who was coming to Vegas for the Western Republican Leadership Conference.”

Well, I’d been busy covering the debate and hadn’t seen the Twitter message, and by the time I hit my deadline for The American Spectator, the fact that Telford was in town had slipped my mind.

Fast-forward to this morning. I had to go down to the drugstore to buy a razor, and was walking through the lobby of the hotel when a familiar figure walked past me. So I reached out and slugged Telford in the arm.

“Dude, why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t know you were in town — until you slugged me in the arm.”

“It wasn’t exactly a secret that I was coming to Vegas,” I said. “But I guess nobody reads my blog.”

“Well,” Telford said. “I figured you wouldn’t get invited.”

“Yeah, I invited myself. Because nobody ever invites me anywhere. Like BlogCon — can you believe Tabitha Hale left me off the list?”

Telford laughed. Because, of course, I’m always left off the list, unlike Stephen Kruiser, Katie Harbath, Cord Blomquist, Peter List, Frank Keegan, Dana Loesch, Larry O’Connor, John Nolte, Meredith Dake, Matthias Shapiro, Will Franklin, Brandon Stewart, Bill Beutler, Michael Sandoval, Ari Armstrong, Todd Shepherd, T.L. James, Kelly Maher, Andrew Malcom, Melissa Clouthier, Michelle Malkin, Steven Crowder, Jim Pethokoukis, Dean Clancy, Max Pappas, Ed Morrissey, Deneen Borelli, Ace of Spades, Kristina Ribali, Russ Walker . . .

Just like Telford didn’t call me when he got to Vegas — because nobody wants to hang out with me, right? — Tabitha didn’t invite me to BlogCon because she wants it to be a fun, exciting event featuring people who are actually important, influential and popular.

In an effort to understand this situation, I mentally envisioned Tabitha’s worldview as a Venn Diagram:

There is no “Set AB,” because these are non-intersecting sets.

Ergo, the very fact that you’re reading my blog means that you are not important and don’t really matter.

UPDATE: Tabitha accuses me of harassment? A historic first: Harassment with Venn Diagrams.

Meanwhile, this might be a good time to remind you that I’ll be speaking Oct. 29 at the Maryland Conservative Action Network’s “Turning the Tides” conference in Annapolis.

Does Endorsing The #Occupy Movement Signal That The Administration Is Going ‘Scorched Earth’?

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by Smitty

Via Althouse, you have to wonder what, if any, thought occurs in senior Democrat noggins:

President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election.

Last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that “the protests you’re seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don’t seem to play by the same set of rules.” Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message.

I just finished Explaining Postmodernism on the flight to Vegas.

While falling short of any clinical diagnosis of insanity, I’m moving closer to believing these senior Democrat leaders are fairly close to religious fanatics. Or maybe jilted lovers, who are willing to burn down the house around that which they formerly loved, rather than let him/her enjoy liberty. After having stashed enough money overseas where the results won’t matter, of course.

Keep your powder dry and your eyes peeled, Americans.