Rant du jour: September 21, 2010

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  Ahmadinejad: Iran will never recognize "the Zionist regime"
  
  Speaking at the UN today, Iranian iman's puppet president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predictably reiterated his position on Israel:
  

  
  "The Iranian nation will never recognize the Zionist regime"

  
  
  Okay, we get that. We, as you know, not only recognize the nation of Israel, we recognize her right to defend herself against you. And if she asks for our help, we will help.
  
  On other issues, Ahmadinejad evidently considers adultery worse than murder:
  

  
  Ahmadinejad accused the West of launching a "heavy propaganda" campaign against the case of an Iranian woman who had been sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery but failing to react with outrage over the imminent execution of Teresa Lewis in Virginia, according to state-run IRNA.

  
  
  Stoning is more humane than lethal injection too, I guess.
  
  Ahmadinejad continued:
  
  

  "Today Western media are propaganda agents who continuously speak about democracy and human rights though their slogans are sheer lies," he added.

  
  
  Umm, help me out here. We've said you don't recognize Israel's right to exist and you promote honor killings via stoning ... which you just confirmed. What did we lie about, exactly?
  
  Does the U.S. really need need further reason to get out of the U.N. than that they continue to give the floor to barbaric goons? When in the last twenty years has the U.N. been anything more than a forum for sanctimonious tyrants?
  



• 
  
  Bill Clinton warns Democrats: Don't Underestimate Sarah Palin
  
  

  Former President Bill Clinton advised Democrats today not to underestimate the possibility that Sarah Palin could be a powerful candidate in the 2012 presidential elections, citing her resiliency and calling her a "a compelling, attractive figure" who knows how to appeal to her conservative base.

  
  
  Did anyone else force back a snicker when Clinton said, "a compelling, attractive figure?"
  

Mark Dayton: Minnesota's own John Kerry

Jonah Goldberg once called Sen. John Kerry "a human toothache with the charisma of a 19th-century Oxford Latin tutor." (With apologies to 19th-century Latin tutors.)

Minnesota's DFL gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton is cast from the same mold.

"I'm going to use the powers of intellectual persuasion," he said at the beginning of his remarks at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. "Taxes, I believe, are the lubricant for the machinery of our democracy."

I read this quote from Dayton's September 13 presentation and I heard John Kerry's voice in my head. (Ouch!) They obviously use the same playbook, but they must even have the same speechwriter.

"We have a moral responsibility ... to make taxes more fair," he said.

When I think of taxes, the first moral precepts that come to my mind are "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods." Or, for some tax morality from a source other than scripture, try Abraham Lincoln:

"Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

Dayton continually proves himself a short-sighted silver spooner who believes wealth is either inherited or redistributed, which, although it may be the story of his life, it denies the overall American experience.

And like Minnesota's perennial bore Walter Mondale, Dayton is campaigning on a promise to raise taxes.

On one hand, I admire Dayton's courage to talk up taxes at a time when the entire country is seething over Washington's phenomenally reckless spending and the nearly perpetual and exponential tax increases it will require. But really, Dayton's blindness is staggering. Anyone who still thinks you can target a tax hike at the rich without impacting the middle class with so much recent history to the contrary is chronically disconnected from reality. His "intellectual persuasion" is devoid of field experience.

Dayton's classist rhetoric characterizes a faith in a ruling class that is better qualified to spend money than the people who earn it. It is the sort of elitism that prompted statesmen like Ronald Reagan to refer to government as "they" instead of "we." We (the people) need a spokesman who is not an insider and will advocate for us against a presumptive oligarchy.

Dayton's tax metaphor is apt. His "lubricant" of democracy is what greases the palms, slickens politicians, and speeds up slippery slopes. It's the snake oil that deceives impressionable voters. We don't want to "lubricate" government any more.

P.J. O'Rourke said, "The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop." Maybe a little less grease will do the trick.

The truth Dayton and his ilk refuse to admit is that rich people create jobs - real, permanent jobs, better than government can ever offer, but taxes deter job creators from creating jobs. Entrepreneurism creates jobs, but taxes kill entrepreneurism. Dayton's "lubricant" of government burdens the people and kills prosperity.

Minnesotans are tired of Johnny-one-note politicians like Dayton whose only solution to any problem is a tax hike. The lubricant our democracy needs is free enterprise.