Voting recommendations

Mr. Light Bulb kindly asks for your consideration of the following candidates in the following races:

• House District 130 - Please vote for Alan Fletcher. The incumbent, Corbin Van Arsdale, is no where to be seen, except now that he's in serious jeopardy of losing his house seat he's all over the place. Van Arsdale voted for the largest tax increase in Texas history, he voted for the Trans Texas Corridor, he voted for the Granny tax. And there's lots more bad votes. Dan Patrick and Paul Bettencourt have asked Van Arsdale many times for help with appraisal caps to no avail.
  
  
• Congressional District 14 - Please vote for Chris Peden. The incumbent, Ron Paul, is a kook.
  
  
• Harris County Judge - Please vote for Charles Bacarisse. The incumbent, Ed Emmett, has been appointed (more like anointed) by the establishment Republicans. We Republicans don't anoint people. We elect them. Emmett has already tried to raise toll rates and does not see our illegal immigration problem as something to worry about. Charles has already been hard at work on the problem.

Lower tax rates lead to higher revenues . . . in Hong Kong

Yet another example of the demonstrated effects of lower tax rates.

Hong Kong's financial chief said Wednesday he will cut salary and corporate taxes and abolish duty on beer and wine after a booming economy pushed the city's budget surplus to a record high.

In his maiden budget speech, Financial Secretary John Tsang said he would increase spending on health services and introduce measures to bridge the widening wealth gap and reduce air pollution.

Duty on beer and wine -- currently at 40 percent -- will be cut with immediate effect.

Tsang estimated the budget surplus would reach a record 115.6 billion dollars (14.8 billion US) in the fiscal year to March, four and a half times the government's forecast and nearly twice as much as last year's figure.

The territory's fiscal reserves will reach 484.9 billion dollars, he said.

Tsang attributed the surplus to higher-than-expected tax revenues from the city's booming stock and property markets as well as company profits and salaries.

Tsang fulfilled the government's last year promise to cut salaries tax to 15 percent in 2008-09 from 16 percent and the corporate tax rate to 16.5 percent from 17.5 percent.

He also announced a one-off tax reduction of 75 percent of salaries tax and tax under personal assessment with a ceiling of 25,000 dollars.

[emphasis mine]

Wonder when we'll see our own lower tax rates made permanent?

William F. Buckley Jr. - 1925-2008

The leader of modern conservative thinking has passed away.

He died while at work; if he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.

And what a warrior he was. See him slay the dragon of "too much conservatism is a bad thing":

Now, David Gergen was the Director of Communications at the White House for several years before pulling out a few months ago to return to private life. You will not be surprised to learn that he thinks Mr. Reagan needs to bring "new energy and ideas into a second term." You will not be surprised that new ideas always, but always, involve more social spending at home together with more regulation; and, abroad, more appeasement.

...

But the zinger is the foreign-policy plank for the New Reagan. You've guessed it? right. He must turn his "creative energies to building a different, closer relationship with Moscow." Why not a "Soviet specialist" to advise him? Say, Richard Barnet from the Institute for Policy Studies. Can't "more heavyweight strategic thinkers be found to come into the Administration in a second term"? Somebody like, oh, Herbert Scoville? You will notice that the softer you are, in that world, the heavier you are. Churchill would have been such a lightweight he'd have floated.

What Mr. Gergen has in mind for President Reagan's second term is that he should ignore conservative thought domestically and, abroad, revise weakward our policy of resistance to Soviet encroachment. Not bad, this agenda, for one man. It calls merely for undoing the Federalist Papers, and unliving Lenin. And progressing into history with the force and personality of a vanilla milkshake.

Or read his incredulity as bad weather and poor responses become the fault of the Bush Administration.

"As the water recedes," Dowd explains, "more and more decaying bodies will testify to the callous and stumblebum administration response to Katrina's rout of 90,000 square miles of the South." Another planted axiom. It is that the Bush Administration, to return to the language of Mr. Friedman, "has engaged in a tax giveaway since 9/11 that has had one underlying assumption: There will never be another rainy day."

The gravamen against Bush becomes plain: The Bush administration insisted "on cutting more taxes, even when that has contributed to incomplete levees and too small an army to deal with Katrina, Osama, and Saddam at the same time.”

The proposition that the Federal Government under George W. Bush has been shortchanging welfare is in astonishing conflict with the figures. Under Bush, federal spending increases have been at the fastest rate in 30 years. Non-defense discretionary spending under Bush has grown by 35.7 percent, the highest rate of federal government growth since the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.

Again, the planted axiom is that the New Orleans levee has been for years a national pustule that George Bush refused to lance because he didn't want to drain the money needed by Dick Cheney to buy his waterfront estate. If New Orleans was conspicuous for its vulnerability, why hadn't the city’s articulate mayor, or his fellow Democrat the articulate governor, said something about it? Why did it not figure in the demands of the Democratic party at its convention in Boston? How explain the silence on the subject of candidate John Kerry?

You can read much more at the National Review Online archives of Mr. Buckley's writings.

On Valentine's Day

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.

— Proverbs 31:30

How I love you, My Beautiful One.

What kind of crazy talk is this? Music can NOT change the world?

First we find out Botox is not perfectly safe, and now this?

Canadian folk rock legend Neil Young said he has lost all hope that music can change the world, as he presented a documentary about his 2006 anti-war concert tour at the Berlin film festival on Friday.

"I know that the time when music could change the world is past. I really doubt that a single song can make a difference. It is a reality," Young told reporters.

"I don't think the tour had any impact on voters."

Again, I'm stunned. I mean, really, just think of all the many wars that have been ended by a great song. And all the riots that have melted away by playing just the right tune. And now we hear it can't really happen after all.

Neil, where's your faith?

Young said he deliberately included interviews with unimpressed critics and soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the documentary of his band's "Freedom of Speech" reunion tour, which earned them both praise and death threats.

"Otherwise I thought it would just feel like a bunch of old hippies. And nobody would care. I would not, I would have left," said Young, who directs his films under the pseudonym Bernard Shakey.

No, no, no, Neil. No one would ever think of you and your friends as just a bunch of old hippies. Never ever. I mean it.

For sure, dude.

What? Botox might not be perfectly safe?

I'm stunned. The FDA is reviewing the safety of Botox.

Regulators said on Friday they were reviewing the safety of Allergan Inc's Botox and a competing product after reports of deaths and serious reactions in some patients.

This is incredibly puzzling. Botox might not be perfectly safe? Botox, a form of Botulinum toxin, might not be perfectly safe? Botox, made from one of the most poisonous naturally occurring substances in the world, might not be perfectly safe? Injecting small amounts of a highly poinsonous substance diectly under the skin might not be perfectly safe? Really?

Who knew.

We are doomed

Mitt Romney's "suspension" of his campaign all but guarantees Juan McAmnesty as the Republican candidate.

John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival Mitt Romney suspended his faltering campaign. "I must now stand aside, for our party and our country," Romney told conservatives.

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror," Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

That's it. The mainstream media now has the Republican candidate they've longed for: a liar, a liberal, and hot under the collar. I wish I could sit back and watch the impending train wreck with morbid fascination. Unfortunately, it will be the ruination of our party.

How repugnant.

What in the world is going on?

Huckabee?

Are you kidding me? He's still around?

It's bad enough that Juan McAmnesty has won a number of states. But how in the world did Huckabee win more states than Romney? Good grief.

I'm sorry to say it, but we're doomed.

Quick! Somebody get this woman some HillaryCare, now!

Follow these simple directions:

• Go to your local Department of Healthcare station (much like the Department of Motor Vehicles)
  
• Fill out the "Cough Suppressant Requisition" forms, in triplicate, of course
  
• Fill out the "Doctor Exam Requisition" forms, again in triplicate
  
• Wait three weeks
  
• Receive call notifying you of doctor appointment time, in four weeks
  
• Visit doctor at scheduled appointment, receive exam and cough suppressant prescription
  
• Drop off prescription at local, government-run pharmacy
  
• Pick up cough suppressant, two weeks later
  
• Get well

If you disagree with any of the above scheduling, you can appeal any of these decisions to your local Healthcare Ombudsman by filling out the approrpriate form, in triplicate.

Ann Coulter nails it

I won't go as far as voting for Monica Lewinsky's Ex-Boyfriend's Wife, but I certainly can't vote for McCain. And Ann gives some compelling reasons:

• She (Monica Lewinsky's Ex-Boyfriend's Wife) is more conservative than is McAmnesty
  
• She is smarter than he is
  
• She lies less than he does (when he's caught in a lie, he doesn't know to stop telling it)
  
• She hasn't taken a stand on closing Guantanamo, he has (he wants it closed)
  
• She is a Defeat-ocrat, he is (supposedly) a Republican, and yet their positions are millimeters apart

If he wins the nomination, he'll be the ruination of the Republican party.

I know this is a bad thing - Rick "39%" Perry has endorsed McCain

He endorsed Rudy. But now that Rudy has withdrawn, he's backing the McCainiac.

"He and I may not agree on every issue," Mr. Perry said of the Arizona senator. "But we do agree that this country cannot flinch when it comes to the war against the Islamic terrorists."

Mr. Perry's move followed by hours California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's endorsement of Mr. McCain at a joint appearance on the West Coast. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist endorsed the senator Saturday night, just three days before Mr. McCain's big win in that state's GOP primary.

Mr. Perry, who earlier had backed former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, dismissed suggestions that he again has defied his conservative supporters' wishes.

Though Mr. McCain has angered party loyalists by authoring bills to overhaul campaign finance and immigration and by voting twice against President Bush's tax cuts, Mr. Perry praised Mr. McCain for promising to get rid of pork barrel "earmarks" in the federal budget.

As he had earlier in endorsing Mr. Giuliani, the governor framed his choice as driven by national security considerations.

"I happen to think John McCain can and will win the war on terror," Mr. Perry said at a news conference in his Capitol office. "Everything else is secondary."

The RINOs are lining up like good little lemmings.