Columnist.
Washington -- William McGurn, the esteemed Wall Street Journal columnist and soon-to-be editor of the editorial page of the New York Post, has made an interesting observation about the fabulous Bush tax cuts that are about to lapse. They amount to a substantial sum of money for a middle-class family. For the middle class it will be a big deal if they disappear. President Barack Obama has portrayed the Bush tax cuts as a rich person's tax cut, but now he is portraying them as a huge tax break for the middle class. Of a sudden he says do not let them lapse! Instead raise taxes on the wealthy!
Washington-Jeffrey Hillman is a man who shambles the streets of New York City looking quite unkempt, drab, and hopeless. He panhandles sometimes and mutters to himself. Frankly, he looks a wreck and apparently is often in need of a pair of shoes. On cold winter nights he gets them. One cold November night, Officer Lawrence DePrimo spotted Hillman seated shoeless on the pavement of Times Square, and the young policeman left his post, went into a store nearby, and bought Hillman a pair of shoes costing $100. He even helped Hillman put them on. A tourist snapped a picture of DePrimo doing this, and the picture appeared on Facebook. It went viral, and was seen around the world -- a young New York City cop, putting shoes on a beggar.
Washington -- What is a Republican elected official? A Republican elected official is one who says, "I won't raise my constituents' taxes." Asked to elaborate, the Republican elected official explains, "I will keep taxes down to allow the economy to grow and to throw off ever more tax revenue." The Republican believes that the way to pay for government is to let the economy roar ... and to keep spending reasonable. What is a Democratic elected official? Back in the early 1960s a Democratic elected official, at least when it came to growing the economy, was not much different from a Republican. President John F. Kennedy called for a tax cut to fire up the economy. Things are different now. A Democratic elected official today is a crafty pol whose economic theories are, at best, muzzy-headed. The Democrats have supposedly embraced the middle class. That is, as the mathematician Senator Patty Murray of Washington said on National Public Radio the other day, "98 percent" of the American people. The Democrats promise not to raise taxes on this middle class. They will only raise them on the top two percent, who are mostly scoundrels anyway, and the economy will grow, and all will be well.
Washington -- Sex remains the surest prop for all that is funny ... and sad. In the first instance, we often call the result ribaldry. In the second instance, it is always called tragedy. General David Petraeus has, in war, been a hero. In public service, too, he was a national asset. But toward the end of his soldiering, his life is now cast in doubt. As the head of CIA, the doubt has increased. Almost certainly, as director of central intelligence, he was no Dick Helms or Bill Casey. Those names from a better era illuminate the dreariness of this tawdry episode, and I hope it is merely tawdry, not anything more than that. Certainly, it could not be the national betrayal spoken of by Ben Stein this week at Spectator.org, could it?
Washington -- Jimmy Carter is redeemed! The grinning dunce of yesteryear, who grew into the anile doddering figure of today, lecturing the civilized on all manner of statecraft, has been replaced by the saturnine gaunt prophet, Barack Obama. His sorry performance these past four years he lays to the administration of George W. Bush. The next four years will be a replay of the last four years, and an even graver crisis will confront us then with the domestic economy in a funk and foreign potentates all laughing at us. The Prophet Obama has demonstrated that you can preside over a wobbly economy and be re-elected. Apparently it is not "the economy, stupid," as James Carville told us. You can suffer a foreign policy disaster (even in the midst of a campaign) and it will be ignored. Jimmy could have been re-elected in 1980 if it were not for the miracle of Ronald Reagan. Had the Republicans nominated a perfectly nice man, say a successful businessman who earned a fortune as large as John F. Kennedy or Franklin D. Roosevelt inherited, Jimmy would have won re-election and the economy would have continued to founder in stagflation and he would have been sending helicopters out into the desert to be destroyed; possibly he would be sending the fleet to be destroyed.
WASHINGTON -- Reviewing the last few months of this tumultuous presidential campaign, I see the debates as having a wondrous salience. The first was the most momentous since Nixon vs. Kennedy, though that 1960 confrontation was mostly a matter of cosmetics. Listening to it on radio, many in the audience came away thinking that the participant with the five-o'clock shadow had won. That would have been Richard Nixon. In debate this time around, Mitt Romney hammered Barack Obama mercilessly. Under the ongoing assault Obama's knees buckled and he repeatedly looked glassy-eyed. If the contest were a prizefight, the referee would have stepped in. Actually, I felt sorry for Obama. My tax-bracket notwithstanding, I did not want to see Mitt hit him again, but he did: the economy! the national debt! joblessness! However, the debate was not a prizefight. It was the first of three presidential debates and, though restrained in the next two contests, Romney accomplished just what he wanted. The debates left him looking reasonable, informed, competent and presidential.
Washington -- This election is not turning out the way President Barack Obama had expected. Perhaps that is why he has looked so uncomfortable in his three debates with the suddenly debonair Governor Mitt Romney. Possibly President Obama had expected something more from the former governor of Massachusetts, the former CEO of the 2002 Winter Olympics, the former head of Bain Capital -- and, incidentally, is not Bain Capital assuming the same demonic role in this contest between Obama and Romney as Halliburton industries once played in the campaigns of Bush-Cheney? It is, I suppose, an asset that in all their years of adult life neither Obama nor Joe Biden have ever suffered any exposure to the dark doings of private-sector employment, none whatsoever. It is a dispensation that has kept them pure, almost virginal.
WASHINGTON -- I am grateful to George Washington University professor of Law, Jonathan Turley, for pointing out that a growing number of world leaders find the First Amendment's right of free speech to be an inconvenience. He cites, for instance, U. N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's warning that "when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected." Turley makes the valuable -- and if you think about it, obvious -- observation that free speech becomes intolerable not when it is used recklessly but when one person or a group of people object to its use, especially when they object violently.
WASHINGTON -- Well, apparently I am not crazy after all. The polls have caught up with me, and they -- aprŠs le d‚bat -- are coming around to my point of view. Governor Mitt Romney is ahead in the race for the White House, and he will probably be residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2013. I have been saying it for weeks, recognizing that the polls are weighted too heavily toward the Democratic candidate, employ too small a sampling -- as little as nine percent of the electorate -- and do not take into account the most important issue, the economy. Still, before the debate the polls were heavily against me, and my colleagues were beginning to question my judgment. No, make that my sanity. Now they are again reassured. I am allowed to work alone in my ninth-floor office with the window open. The polls show Romney pulling ahead even in battleground states after he demonstrated in debate last week that we need something more than a ceremonial president in the White House. It is a dangerous world that we live in.
WASHINGTON -- Autumn in New York -- that sound like the title of a song! In fact, it sounds like the first line of a song, and so it is. Autumn is a lovely time of year in many places, but for me my favorite place at this time of year is New York City. As the song goes, it seems "so inviting." And one of the great events marking autumn in New York is the Columbus Day Parade. It reminds us of what a great melting pot it has been, and, one hopes, it always will be. Christopher Columbus opened the New World to European migration in 1492. He prefigured the spirit of America with his daring, his sense of duty and his piety. Samuel Eliot Morison, in the second volume of his two-volume history, "The European Discovery of America," portrayed Columbus as a truly heroic figure, an exemplary captain of the ocean waves, to introduce us all to the admirable adventure that America has proved to be. 68 years ago, the Italian-Americans in New York City's Columbus Citizens Foundation gave Columbus a fitting memorial in the Columbus Day Parade, and this year on October 8, once again all Americans can come out to honor him and share in the glory that is the American melting pot.
Washington -- Now that Governor Mitt Romney has revealed the details of his tax returns, it is high time that Senate Leader Harry Reid reveal the details of his relationship with that cow that was linked to him in a world exclusive right here in this very column last month. Doubtless, I shall be nominated for yet another Pulitzer, but as always I shall chastely demur, insisting, as in the past, that I consider this column a public trust. No award or commendation is required. Fulfilling my public duty as a citizen is in itself reward enough. Last month, I was only very sketchy about Reid's relationship with the cow. No names were included. No trysting places could be exposed. Yet, Reid claimed living, breathing sources had informed him that the Massachusetts governor had failed to file his income taxes. The Senate leader was adamant: no taxes had been paid by the governor over a 10-year period! Well, as with so many other things that the senator says, it was poppycock. So go ahead, senator, tell us all you know about the cow or I shall be compelled to tell all. Even the amusing story about where she got that cute bronze cowbell.
WASHINGTON -- Allow me to offer a suggestion as to how our government might avoid the slaughter of our personnel in diplomatic installations around the Islamic world by mobs. It seems to me most probable that insults to the Prophet Muhammad appear regularly in the modern world. After all, insults against revered figures in the world's other major religions pop up all the time. As for Islam, a book such as Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" can be published anywhere. A thirteen-minute anti-Islamic video can arrive on YouTube, and my guess is there are others that have and will appear there. In some obscure land, far from the major media, a cartoon is published perhaps with the Prophet in an absurd pose. Why not a simple slur on Facebook? Who can control Facebook? Will a slur found there set off the mobs next time? And what constitutes a slur? These Islamic mobs keep changing their standards. What was a minor lapse of taste yesterday becomes a cause for terrible indignation today.
WASHINGTON -- Nuts. The Democratic National Convention is over. Watching Bill Clinton, Jean-Fran‡ois Kerry, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and all the other preposterosities -- not least being the widely under-depreciated Sandra Fluck -- I fell under a spell. I thought the convention would go on forever. There would be no need for horror movies, action movies, X-Treme sports, cockfights or soap operas. I could enjoy them all in the comfort of my own home -- all provided by the Democratic National Committee, safely watched over by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and probably select units of the North Carolina National Guard. Yet the convention ended, and now comes the surprise. President Obama actually received a bump in the polls, modest but a bump. CNN was up 6 points. Gallup was up 5 points. ABC News/Washington Post was up 1, and so it went until I came across something called SurveyUSA/Civitas. That poll had Mitt Romney up by 10 points, but I do not know who they were polling or why. Possibly they were pulling our leg.
WASHINGTON -- At this Democratic National Convention, I am going to be particularly interested in the crowds on the floor. Who cares about what Bill Clinton says? He does not mean it anyway. In the 1990s, he governed like a Republican after saying that "the age of Big Government is over." Incidentally, he governed pretty well. He would have made a good moderate Republican, so long as he had good conservative majorities in the House and the Senate to keep him -- you will excuse the word -- honest. Now, of course, he has committed another of his episodic tergiversations, writing a book in praise of behemoth government, as though the 1990s never happened.
WASHINGTON -- How little we know about holy Islam! When those poor wretches who were imprisoned at Abu Ghraib were pictured for all the world to see naked with underpants on their heads, we were told that the naked male Islamic body must never be seen in public. Yet we have been seeing naked male Islamic bodies for years -- often with their hands tied behind their backs and their heads chopped off. Their assailants were devotees of Islam, often very zealous. Few Westerners committed these atrocities, and if they were caught, they were punished. Then too we were told that mosques were revered places of worship by Islam, and they must not be subject to attack or used in acts of violence. Alas, for years, mosques have been blown up. Their inhabitants have been gunned down, even impaled on sharp blades. These were not the acts of unbelievers or of warriors from the Godless West. Rather, they were the acts of the faithful, often members of the same sect or tribe.
WASHINGTON -- It has been a very rough patch for Our President, and I do believe it is going to get rougher still. Do not be surprised, as the month goes on and August runs into September, that his campaign budget becomes tighter. President Barack Obama is spending more money than he is raising. It will get worse. A president who mismanages the federal budget the way Obama does cannot be expected to manage his campaign budget much better. Lavish spending, it turns out, is a way of life for the community organizer who became our 44th president. Lavish spending on Campaign 2012 will be looked back on and seen as one of the campaign's greatest weaknesses. He can spend the money, but my guess is he will not be able to raise it.
A week passes, and thus far, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to tell us whether he is or is not having sexual relations with a cow. As was reported in this column last week, based on sources in the field, Reid has been involved with the cow for at least three months, possibly more. My sources cannot be identified for obvious reasons. Even The New York Times would not reveal their identities. The story is that hot.
WASHINGTON -- Now it can be told. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite his lofty position in the United States Senate and despite being married to a very nice woman, has been having sex with a cow for at least three months, maybe more. How he met the cow I cannot say, as it would compromise extremely sensitive sources. Where he met her? Again, my lips are sealed. Nonetheless, it is time for Senator Reid to come clean about that cow. The Senate Majority Leaders said recently of Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, that he "must prove that he has paid his taxes, because he hasn't." Well, Reid must prove he has not had sex with a cow. He must prove that he does not even know the cow. He must because he has, and he does.
Now the Liberals Covet the Corpses of Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan
WASHINGTON -- What does James Holmes, the Colorado killer, have in common with Jared Loughner, Andres Behring Breivik, Seung-Hui Cho, Dylan Klebold, and Eric Harris? They all have massacred innocent people on a massive scale. Yet they have something else in common. They are all nobodies or losers, as the phrase has it. All were on a downward incline from a not very lofty ascent. They were troubled, but there are other troubled souls in our society. They were fascinated with violence, but so are others. Why else would major entertainment corporations invest so much money in clang & bang, blood & guts entertainments like childish movies, idiotic video games and even rap music? They were quiet, loners, and dreamy isolates. My guess is they have watched a lot of TV with canned laughter and implausible sound effects. I do not see a lot of participation in sport with these young heroes' lives. At their most active, they are probably vigorous onanists.
