Today's Nuze: January 09, 2007

Tuesday - January 9, 2007

GET AN AUTOGRAPHED FIRST PRINTING COPY!

Here's my fundamental problem with those who want to ban flag-burning: To punish those who desecrate our national flag would be a sign of weakness, or an inability to take the worst criticism someone has to offer and come away standing tall. To accept that criticism, on the other hand show that we're strong-that we're able to take the punches and remain proud and unbowed.

"Somebody's Gotta Say It" by Neal Boortz. In the bookstores on February 20, 2007

"Somebody's Gotta Say It" will appear on your bookstore shelves on Tuesday, February 20, 2007. We're making plans to have thousands of books stacked in a dark room in Atlanta for me to sit down and sign ... not book plates, but my autograph on the title page of every one. These are for those of you who might not be able to get to one of my book signings following the release of the book. Just Click Here for your autographed first edition of Somebody's Gotta Say It! We'll ship it to you the week the book debuts.

STRUCK A NERVE! AND LOVING IT!

As you surely must know by now, Princess Nancy is really banging the "tax the rich" drums in Washington. The idea of making the evil, hated, nasty, vapid, horrible, filthy rich pay their "fair share" has always been a winner with the core Democrat voters, and Pelosi sure knows how to play to her audience.

Yesterday afternoon I made a brief appearance on "Your World with Neal Cavuto." The subject was Pelosi's tax increase plans. At one point during the interview I mentioned that due to the economic ignorance of the American people they just don't understand the tax burden that high achievers already pay.

Oh man! Did that tick off some leftist woman named Melanie! Melanie apparently hangs around a website called "News Hounds." Their motto is "We watch Fox News so you don't have to." Yeah .. a website dedicated to the idea that Fox puts a conservative bias on its news coverage.

Note: Last year during a six-month period we ran a little experiment on the Boortz show. We asked listeners to call in with examples of conservative bias in the news coverage on Fox News Channel. I can't remember one legitimate evidence of conservative bias in news coverage that was presented by any caller. What did we get? We got call after call telling us about Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity .. proof that Fox News is biased. These people just didn't understand that O'Reilly and Hannity aren't newscasters, and that they are not required to be objective in their coverage. I even received an email from one particularly brilliant person who told me that since Sean Hannity gets to express his personal opinions on the air, there is no reason why Katie Couric shouldn't be able to do the same thing. This highly educated person (just ask her) doesn't know the difference between a newscast and a show about the news featuring commentary.

Anyway ... back to Melanie and News Hounds.

You can read Melanie's post here .. and I urge you to do so. Melanie is an excellent example of a core Democrat voter. I make reference to high-income Americans as high-achievers, and she says: "According to Boortz, uneducated, ignorant people like you and me and all of us just don't appreciate how special rich people are."

What seems to be Melanie's problem? Clearly she got her thong in a bunch when I referred to those with high incomes (and remember, we're talking about income taxes here) as high-achievers. Maybe it's just me, but I do consider people who work hard in our free enterprise system and really succeed as "special", especially when compared to those who squander their American birthright and grow to adulthood with only the skills necessary to retrieve grocery carts from a parking lot.

Now just why would a liberal get so bent out of shape when you correlate achievement with income?

Come on ... turn your baseball hat around with the bill pointed straight ahead! Aha! Now your IQ has increased by about 10 points and it is all so clear, isn't it? Democrats don't like to tie income to achievement because, as you should know, income is not earned --- it's distributed! People in the higher income brackets don't earn income --- they receive it! Liberals will tell you that only those in the middle or lower income brackets, people they call "working Americans" actually earn their income.

If you can convince the bulk of our population that high-income Americans haven't really done anything "special" (as Melanie says) to earn that income, then it is quite easy to convince the people that this income, or a good portion of it, should be seized from these lucky rich people and spent on government programs that reward the real workers in our society ---- the real workers, of course, being the ones more likely to vote Democrat.

Now that you've read Melanie's posting on News Hounds, take a minute or so to read some of the comments. Just click on the link below Melanie's posting. Remember -- this is basically a left-wing website, so keep that in mind while you explore these people's minds. You will find a few people in these comments who show evidence of the ability to think logically.

As you read down in the comments you'll come upon one from Brian. Brian says that "The rich may be high achievers, but with that, you must pay your fair share of taxes!"

Fair share? OK ... let's talk fair share. What do you think liberals mean by that phrase? How would they define "fair share?" I've asked a lot of them this question, and never get a good answer. So let me take a stab at it.

I'm going to use the example of a condominium here. In virtually every condominium you will find a condo fee. Everybody pays a share of the operating expenses of the condominium. How, though, do you figure out what the assessments will be if different people have different sized condos? In the condominium I live in in Atlanta there are some units that have around 2,300 square feet, and a few that are up in the 9,000 square foot range. Obviously the people in the larger condos should pay a higher fee than those in the smaller ones, right? That would be fair .. right? But how do you figure out who pays what?

Well here's an idea? You add up the total square footage of the entire condominium. Just for the sake of argument, let's say that the total square footage is 300,000 square feet and the annual budget for operating the condo is $1,600,000. If you own a 2,300 square foot condo you own a total of 0.76% of the total square footage. This means that you should be responsible for 0.76% of the annual general operating expenses. That would bring your annual assessment to $12,160, or just over $1000 a month. If you own the 9,000 square foot condo you have about 3% of the total square footage, and your assessment is going to be about $4,000 a month.

Now does anyone want to argue that this would not be a fair way to assess the costs of operating the condo? There's your "fair share" in action.

Now .. since we're talking income taxes here (not wealth taxes -- income taxes) it would stand to reason that you would be paying your "fair share" of income taxes is you were paying in proportion to your share of the total income, just as our condo owners pay in proportion to their share of the square footage.

So ... let's look at the statistics and see where we stand. These figures come from the U.S. Treasury Department. Argue with them if you will .. but they are official government statistics. The Treasury Department refers to these numbers as "Projected Share of Individual Income Taxes and Income in 2005."

The bottom 50% of income earners in this country earn about 13.9% of all income. That would be the equivalent of owning 13.9% of the square footage in the condo. So ... to be fair, they should pay 13.9% of the total income taxes collected by the government, right? Well, the fact is they pay only 3.6% of the income taxes. Could it then be argued that the people in the bottom 50% of income earners aren't paying their fair share?

I don't want to drag this out with a full page of statistics from the Treasury Department .. so let's move on to the top 5% of income earners. The top 5% of income earners in the U.S. earn 31% of all income. So .. their "fair share" would be 31% of all income taxes, right? Well .. the fact is the top 5% of all income earners are paying 54.1% of all income taxes. Now that's a bit more than their "fair share" isn't it?

One last group: The evil, hated, derided "richest one percent." Yes .. here we are looking at the real high achievers (sorry Melanie). The top 1% of income earners in the U.S. in 2005 earned 16.5% of all income. You might be interested in knowing

that this share is actually down from previous years. At any rate --- since the highest 1% of income earners are earning 16.5% of all income, they should be paying 16.5% of all income taxes, right? By now you must know what's coming. The fact is the top 1% of income earners, while earning 16.5% of the total income, are paying 33.7% of all income taxes. They're paying income taxes in an amount double their proportion of the income ... and Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat fellow travelers will tell you that they aren't paying their "fair share."

Now if you were to present these statistics to Melanie or many of her "News Hounds" friends, they would sputter and spit while trying to figure out a way to either totally discount them or rationalize them. If you don't believe me, just give it a shot! Someone actually posted these numbers on the comment board at News Hounds and all these leftists could do was challenge the source or declare the statistics to be a lie.

Liberals. Always trapped by the truth and nailed by logic.

POOR SADDAM HUSSEIN

A new video has been released apparently showing Saddam Hussein lying on the gurney with an injury where the hangman's noose ripped open the skin after snapping his neck. Ouch. Get that man a cough drop and go look for a sewing kit! But now we're being treated to all these stories about how there is all this sympathy for Saddam Hussein. What?

Sympathy for a butcher? That must be something unique to the wonderful, peaceful religion of Islam. Saddam was a butcher, a rapist and a tyrant...why should we care what happens to him? Justice is when people get what they deserve. Saddam received justice.

It doesn't matter how the sentence was carried out...and it doesn't matter how many cell phone videos of Saddam's corpse wind up on YouTube. But that's not what's at work here. What's going on is those in the mainstream media and in anti-American countries around the world have now found some new ammunition.

They think that they can use the execution of a brutal and murderous dictator to somehow generate sympathy for him and create more opposition against the United States. It may work, to an extent. After all, didn't Hillary Clinton say women in Iraq were better off under Saddam? I wonder if she'll be attending the memorial service in Tikrit?

So as the mainstream media, the Democrats and other anti-American Leftists around the world mourn the passing of Uncle Saddam, we get to watch the videos. Hurry up Abu Ali, hurry up!

SHORT CIRCUITING THE SURGE

President Bush is set to announce his new Iraq plan tomorrow...supposedly it will include a troop surge and a timeline for the Iraqis to get their act together. The goal here is to try and complete the mission and get out of there. But don't tell that to Democrats, who continue to threaten to pull the funding.

Victory in Iraq would be a disaster for Democrats. If there is any hint that Bush's plan might work, Democrats must find a way to make sure it isn't implemented.

The sad fact of the situation in Iraq is that it may be too late to win the war there and get out. Not that it's too late for us to actually emerge victorious...we probably could. But it's too late for the Islamic terrorist appeasers in the House and the Senate. The blame-America-first crowd that wants to see us fail simply won't tolerate the war in Iraq any longer. Throw in an impatient public who frankly is somewhat justified in their displeasure. and well, you get what we have today.

What will the endgame be in Iraq? Who knows. Maybe we'll just declare victory and take a walk. One thing's for sure...if Hillary Clinton or some other Democrat wins the Oval Office next year, you can bet it's going to be 1975 all over again. We'll withdraw from Iraq overnight and toss the keys to the Green Zone to Al-Qaeda on the way out.

It's a good thing the media we have today wasn't around 60 years ago. We might all be speaking German by now.

BULLS EYE IN SOMALIA

The U.S. military hit some Al-Qaeda targets in Somalia yesterday, blowing up some Islamic terrorists who were accused of the attacks on our embassies in 1998. Despite the fact that Democrats in Congress would rather appease our enemies in the War On Terror, we're still fighting. That's good to know.

So while the gunships make the rounds in Somalia, get ready. Who will be the first to get up in Congress and condemn the attacks. What one of the new Leftists in Congress will it be? And just when will the appeasers at the UN get into the act? After all, we didn't get a UN resolution passed before we went after these thugs.

It's still nice to see the War On Terror being fought. Back in the Clinton years, we couldn't even agree on a handover of Osama Bin Laden. Now we're going in and taking these people out. Score one for the good guys.

REDNECK SCRAP BOOK

Setting up an aquarium in your house doesn't have to be difficult or require a bunch of equipment. More in the Redneck Scrap Book.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

A listener sent us this extremely rare photograph of Saddam Hussein's cat. I'm not much for cats, but this one seems all right.

Our good friend Psycho brings us this very important public service announcement about toilet germs. Don't click if you're squeamish or lack a sense of humor. [video]

Does the Republican Party really want to guarantee the election of a Democrat president in 2008? Just this simple -- let the Democrats raise taxes. Robert Novak says that a Bush tax increase may well be on the way!

The Wall Street journal says that the best way out of Iraq is to get bold .. now! Go all-out for the win!

Killer bees found near New Orleans. Houston would be willing to give New Orleans back it's Katrina debris in exchange for the bees.

The New Jersey Constitution says that idiots can't vote. No, seriously ... it does. If we had that clause in the U.S. Constitution Nancy Pelosi would be selling flowers on a street corner in San Francisco.

The Democrats made all sorts of nice speeches once they took control of Congress, but as Herman Cain points out, that doesn't really matter. Leadership in the House of Representatives has been lacking for a long time. And that includes when the Republicans were in charge.

More than 9,000 sexual predators have been arrested by immigration officials in the last 3 years...and they're all illegal aliens. Will we deport those that have attacked our children? Probably not. After all, who's going to mow the lawn and hang drywall for $5 an hour?

Did you know that your tax dollars are being used to support terrorism? Millions of dollars we're sending to the Palestinian territories will wind up in the hands of the ruling Hamas party....the same Hamas that is on the terrorism list. How nice.

Al Sharpton is considering running for president next year. This is good news. Who else is going to liven up the debates on C-SPAN between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? There may be home for the Democratic primary yet.

The No Child Left Behind Act is up for renewal. Hard to believe it's been 5 years since that piece of legislation has passed. President Bush wants it renewed, of course. Who could have predicted a so-called conservative Republican would have overseen the federal takeover of the school system?

Democrats in the House have introduced a bill that would implement of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. I wonder if those recommendations include putting government officials in jail who steal classified documents about 9/11 from the National Archives. In their pants.

Joel Mowbray makes note of Sandy Berger's completely free ride from the media. He steals classified documents...and gets a slap on the wrist. You may be interested in knowing what's happened to people convicted of even lesser crimes.

Seems like President Bush is ready to go along with the Democrats' wishes on the Hill and raise taxes on "the rich." Grover Norquist warns that if the GOP goes along with that, they can kiss the 2008 presidential election goodbye.

So just how much is this supposed first 100 hours in Congress by the Democrats going to make a difference? Not much, at least if you ask Brian Doherty at Reason magazine. He says it's all a bunch of hot air.

WSB's Prostate Proactivity Campaign...get all the information you need about prostate cancer here.

Merry Christmas Marines update! See a photo gallery of the Marines receiving their stockings and a thank you letter to all of you who donated.

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