NationRight

A Conservative look at today’s top political news…

“Veep sheet: We have timetables!”

There’s a great deal of talk about who and when Sens. McCain and Obama will choose for running mates for the November election.  It appears that Sen. Obama will name his VP this week and Sen. McCain next week.  Speculation, of course, is rampant about who the choices will be.  Here’s mine:

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  • Obama will choose Joe Biden for his foreign policy credentials
  • McCain will choose Mitt Romney, no matter how much he wants to choose Tom Ridge

Ultimately, McCain’s choice of Romney will put him over the top in November by securing Nevada and Colorado and winning Michigan.

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“For Obama, taxes are about fairness”

In the Wall Street Journal Online, William McGurn brings up a good point about Sen. Obama’s desire to raise taxes on anyone making over $250,000:

And he stuck to it on capital gains, even after ABC’s Charlie Gibson noted that the record shows increased taxes on capital gains — which would affect 100 million Americans — would likely lead to a decrease in government revenues: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

Translated into ordinary English, what that means is that it doesn’t really matter whether a tax increase actually brings in more revenue. It’s not about robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Robbing from the rich will do, especially if it’s done in the name of fairness.

Now there are good reasons Mr. Obama is not likely to pursue the revenue side of the fairness question. As this newspaper noted in a recent editorial, the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service does not show to Mr. Obama’s advantage. As we come to the end of the Bush administration, the top 1% of American taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes — the highest level in 40 years. The top 10% of income earners pay 71% of the taxes.

I can’t say it better than him, especially when he closes with this:

What specific rate of individual taxation would it take for the rich to be paying their fair share?

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“Fay hits Florida, but doesn’t become hurricane”

I guess Al Gore and the climate-changers are hating this.  Once again, another storm will pass without massive loss of life and property damage.  Maybe they can pray for the good-old days of Ivan and Katrina to return so they can take advantage of people’s misfortunes to make a political case.  After lackluster hurricane seasons in 2007 (only one very weak hurricane made landfall) and 2006 (no hurricanes made landfall, although one tropical storm did), 2008 has been a big dud so far (only Eduoard has made landfall as a weak category 2). 

 

So far in this decade (which is almost over, by the way), we have seen 17 hurricanes make landfall with an average intensity of exactly 2.00.  At this rate, we will see a total of 20 for the decade.  Since 1850, the average number of US-landfalling Atlantic Ocean hurricanes has averaged 18 and the intensity has averaged 2.01, so this decade doesn’t appear to be out of the ordinary, as much as Al Gore and his lefty cronies would like to make you think.

 

At what point do intelligent people admit that the high-incident 2004 and 2005 seasons were anomalies not caused by global warming, climate change, or whatever I’m supposed to call it today?