Sibby Online

The lying left on taxes

From Walter E. Williams:

An important component of the leftist class warfare agenda is to condemn President Bush's tax cuts for the rich. This claim is careless, ignorant or dishonest on at least two counts. First there's the constitutional issue. Article I, Section 8 reads, "The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes. ..." That means the president has no taxing authority.

Presidents can propose or veto taxes, and Congress can override vetoes. The bottom line is that all taxing authority rests with the U.S. Congress. The next time you hear someone condemn or praise Bush's tax cuts, ask them whether the Constitution has been amended to give the president taxing authority.

But what about those tax cuts for the rich? Are the rich now sharing a smaller burden of the federal income tax because their fair share of the burden has been shifted to the poor? The most recent Internal Revenue Service statistics can give us some guidance. In 2005, the top 1 percent of income earners, those with an annual adjusted gross income of $365,000 and higher, paid 39 percent of all federal income taxes; in 1999, they paid 36 percent.

In 2005, the top 5 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted gross income of $145,000 and higher, paid 60 percent of all federal taxes; in 1999, it was 55 percent. The top 10 percent, earning income over $103,000, paid 70 percent. The top 25 percent, with income of over $62,000, paid 86 percent, and the top 50 percent, earning $31,000 and higher, paid 97 percent of all federal taxes.

What about any argument suggesting that the burden of taxes have been shifted to the poor? The bottom 50 percent, earning $30,000 or less, paid 3 percent of total federal income taxes. In 1999, they paid 4 percent. Members of Congress know all of this, but they attempt to hoodwink the average American who doesn't.

Obama busted for lying

Melanie Morgan has a great column that includes busting Barack Obama for being a card-carrying member of the lying left:

Barack Obama is a walking contradiction when it comes to the war against Islamic terrorists. Obama is positioning himself to be Rambo in a tie-dyed T-shirt and Birkenstocks. He's trying to placate the anti-war and anti-military leftists in the Democratic Party base, while also trying to sound tough enough to attract the support of more moderate voters.

Obama calls himself a "hawk" in the war on terrorism who would have picked up weapons himself to fight off the terrorists who committed the 9-11 attacks.

Oh really?

I'm a hawk when it comes to defeating terrorism; I was strongly supportive of Afghanistan; I would have picked up arms myself to prevent 9-11 again. – Barack Obama on "Charlie Rose" show, Nov. 24, 2004

Sorry, but Barack Obama is a bald-faced liar.

You see, Obama is a rabid gun-grabber who wouldn't even have been allowed to carry a weapon to fire at the 9-11 terrorists if he had his way. He received an "F" rating from the National Rifle Association, and it's not hard to understand why.

Last year, he told a crowd that he "believe(s) in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturer's lobby. …"

I guess since Barack doesn't support the right of gun ownership in inner cities, he was going to pick up arms and fight the 9-11 terrorists in the countryside.

The left’s white lies

So says a must read from Andrew Klavan:

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

This is no small thing. To rewrite the rules of courteous behavior is to wield enormous power. I see it in Southern California, in the bleeding heart of leftism, where I live. I’ve been banned from my monthly poker game, lost tennis partners, lost friends—not because I’m belligerent but because I’ve wondered aloud if the people shouldn’t be allowed to make their own abortion laws, say, or if the world might not be a better place without the UN.

It’s a rotten feeling. I sometimes think that I’d rather be deemed evil than a boor. Wickedness has some flair to it, even a whiff of radicalism. If you molest a child, there’s always a chance that you can get the ACLU to defend you as a cultural innovator. But if you make a remark at table about the destructive social effects of broken homes and then discover that your dinner partner is a divorcée—trust me, you feel like a real louse. It’s manners, not morals, that lay the borderlines of our behavior.

This, I believe, is the reason conservative politicians so often lose their nerve, why they back down in debate even when they’re clearly right. No one wants to be condemned as a brute—especially not conservatives, who still retain some vague memory of how worthy it is to be a lady or gentleman.

And because we’ve allowed leftists to define the language of political good manners—don’t say women are less scientific; don’t remark that black people bear the same responsibility for their actions as whites; don’t point out that the gunman was a Muslim, it’s not nice—the sort of person willing to speak the truth isn’t always the sort of person you want to be seen with. It sometimes takes, I mean, a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity to withstand the obloquy attached to stating the facts of the matter. If these people in their public personae seem harsh to more genteel conservatives, it may be because it requires that extra dollop of aggression to shatter the silence created by the Left’s increasingly elaborate sensitivities.

Still, mannerly as we would rather be, truth-telling continues to be both compelling and ultimately satisfying. There is, after all, something greater than courtesy. "Firmness in the right," Lincoln called it, "as God gives us to see the right." We find ourselves at a precarious moment in an endeavor of great importance: namely, the preservation of Western rationalism and liberty. It does mankind no good to allow so magnificent an enterprise to slip away merely for fear of saying the wrong thing.

Confronting the donkey cons

David Limbaugh is urging the President to be a real man and stand up to the lying Democrats:

I simply cannot believe President Bush withdrew Sam Fox's nomination for Belgium ambassador. When will he confront congressional Democrats with the same resolve he brings to the war on terror? He doesn't need to get down on their level of stridency and sniping, but he should scrap the illusion that they are operating in good faith and want to work collegially or constructively with him.

If the last six years prove nothing else, they show that Democrats are unwaveringly hostile to this administration. Bush's cordiality in return has only emboldened them to new heights of incivility.

…

Lest I be misunderstood, I'm not suggesting the president reciprocate in kind and treat Democrats as disrespectfully and unfairly as they've treated him and his Cabinet. I'm not advocating that he employ the same abusive and underhanded tactics they've employed against him.

That would require him to level false charges of misconduct and criminality against them, to demagogue every imaginable issue and to place his and his party's interests above the national interest and our national security. It would require him to misrepresent their intentions, statements and actions and to be bitterly partisan and consistently nasty. It would require him to make preposterous, grassy-knoll charges against them like "war for oil, WMD lies" and repeat them every day until people who know better begin to abandon their sound judgment.

But I am suggesting he stand up to these politicians who have made him their sworn enemy and that he go on the offense in getting his message out – as passionately, unapologetically and relentlessly as the Democrats have. I am suggesting he challenge every one of their lies with the indignation they deserve.

Unless he devotes some energy toward making his case and defusing the Democrats' propaganda and slander, he'll make less headway in Iraq and the war on terror, and on domestic policy across the board. He'll do little to regain credibility with those who have bought into the lies about him, he'll further dispirit the conservative base, and the foundation for a conservative victory in 2008 will continue to erode.

Latest from the lying left

This is from Steve Hildebrand’s paid blogger:

With all of that said, MoveOn has never been a "far left" or "extreme left" organization. Frankly, over the years, they've advocated positions that are mainstream and supported by a majority of Americans.

South Dakota’s lying left

The firestorm I caused by referring to the secular MAINstream Country Club Republicans as Satan's gift to the South Dakota Demcorat Party continued on Friday. Later in this post you will find the truth about Patrick Lalley, who took offense to that statement, that he himself also referred to Republicans as being evil. It is truly amazing to witness the degree the far-left Democrats will go to defend the secular wing of the Republicans. They even go as far as lying.

Before I get into Chad Schuldt’s defense of his main propaganda outlet, let me first remind you that he is Steve Hildebrand’s paid blogger. Here is a link to the Hildebrand Tewes Consulting bio web page. And if you scroll down you will find this about Chad Schuldt:

Chad did the compliance work for Senator Tim Johnson's re-election in 2002 and helped manage the GOTV effort. In 2003-2004 he oversaw part of the massive field efforts for Senator Tom Daschle's re-election campaign. He also built and managed the Daschle Voter File, considered to be one of the best files in the nation. During the 2005-2006 cycle, Chad managed the Voter File and helped identify targeted voters for the campaign that overturned the South Dakota abortion ban. He also showed his web design talents in the 2005-2006 cycle by producing the website for Sheldon Whitehouse who defeated incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island.

It was the 2002 Johnson/Thune race where I learned about the cabal between the Hildebrand lead Johnson campaign, the Argus Leader, and Tony Dean. That is what got be into this blogging thing. So I am not surprised to see Hildebrand’s gang coming to the aid of Patrick Lalley, who has been taken to task for misrepresenting the preschool issue by me, and then taken to task by South Dakota War College for his hypocrisy in saying it is due to personal attacks that Sibby Online does not deserve a spot on the Argus Leader’s blogroll, while they allow Chad Schuldt a spot. And before I move on, let me make this clear…the Argus Leader has every right to allow or not allow links on their web site. It is their web site. In fact I am honored that I am excluded.

Now back to the civility of Chad Schuldt. Here is what the Rapid City Journal reported on June 4, 2006:

Sen. Garry Moore of Yankton said consultant Steve Hildebrand, a former executive director for the state Democratic Party and past campaign manager for Tom Daschle, is working to defeat Democratic legislators who voted for HB1215, the controversial near-total ban on abortion approved by the Legislature this year.

Moore said Hildebrand has made it clear that electing pro-choice candidates is more important than electing Democratic candidates. Hildebrand and his employee Chad Schuldt have also issued critical and — in Shuldt’s case — profane statements about Democrats who supported HB1215.

During the past legislative session, Schuldt referred to some Democrats who voted for HB1215 as "(expletive) idiots" and "sickos" on an Internet political blog he maintains. Schuldt also called Moore "a joke" as a legislative leader and encouraged his defeat, along with others who voted for the abortion bill.

Moore said such behavior is unprofessional and inappropriate and cause for the Democratic Party to pull its contract with HildebrandTewes Consulting.

Still I was not surprised to see Chad Schuldt come to the aid of the Argus Leader by saying this on the Lalley thread that whined about my statement about Satan’s gift to the South Dakota Democrat Party:

And yes, we all say outrageous stuff at one point or another (except Officer Epp). I know I have, and I had a good discusson with my readers about it and have adjusted accordingly (it’s the readers that pretty much drive my content and mood)

But I think most readers of South Dakota weblogs would agree that the stuff on the Sibby site is not only outrageous, but typically paranoid blathering that makes no sense. I almost always disagree with the writers on the South Dakota Politics or Dakota War College weblogs, but at least they are coherent in the arguments and are contributing something to the dialogue. That’s not the case with Sibby. The man’s a nut.

And within minutes Lalley makes this ridiculous response:

If I may dive back into this dicussion for just a moment. PP makes some good points about encouraging a diversity of opinion. But I want to point out that my problem with Sibby isn’t philisophical. Rather, it’s an attempt to encourage at least some level of civility in our discourse. I hope that’s clear. PP also makes a good point about some blogs from the other side of the spectrum – I believe he’s refering to CCK, who also posted above. I had similar reservations about including the CCK blog but as Chad points out he’s adjusted his approach somewhat in response to reader comments. I think that’s a sign of mature discourse. Now, we’re all certainly given to moments to vitriol - that’s part of the energy of the blogosphere. But to me there’s still a distinction to be made between emotive writing and vicious, personal attacks.

Wow, Lalley considers someone who says that I am "a nut" whose "typically paranoid blathering that makes no sense" is a "sign of mature discourse" and passes his "level of civility in our discourse". This all goes to prove that Lalley and Schuldt are members of the lying left. Lalley, Schuldt, and Epp have a problem with me because I am not afraid of saying the truth. And I have done so by rejecting the far-left’s Political Correctness, that includes this civility crap. They themselves don’t follow it. And I will show more of that with their own words.

Schuldt lied when he said Todd Epp is exempt from outrageous stuff. Epp said on that very thread that my web site is "BlackHelicopterCornPalaceLand".

And yesterday Epp said that if you are not a Country Club Republican, then Sibby thinks you are a hillbilly Republican. I said no such thing. Another false accusation from Todd Epp who is also a card-carrying member of the lying left. His outrageous allegation prompted Nicholas Nemec to leave this on Epp’s web site:

Every once in a while some other blogger will link to him and like a fool I'll click on it hoping to get some true hillbilly rantings.

Nemec is a former legislator who went on to lobby for the SD Democratic Party. As they applaud the secular Country Club Republicans, these elitists think the rest of us are lowly hillbillies. So the Argus Leader has no problems with a Democrat web site that refers to Republicans as being hillbillies? This meets their level of discourse?

Not only is Epp’s web site on the Argus Leader blogroll, but a relatively new web site is also there where you find the Unruhs called "Crazy right wingers". And the Argus Leader also blogrolls South Dakota War College, who has been defending me. But he also allows comments. Here are some of the things said about me on PP’s post regarding this issue:

Sibby should do the world a favor and suck on a shotgun barrel

Sibby is an idiot.

Five minutes reading his blog left me with the impression that he's a lying, devisive, inflamatory, idiotic, crazy, horrible excuse for a human being.

He's like Ann Coulter with down's syndrome.

he acts like a jackass

And these are from anonymous sources. So Lalley's civility crap and staying away from web sites that contain "personal attacks" is just pure crap. They don't really care about discourse, they only want to promote far-left propaganda.

Lalley’s real problem with my web site is that it holds him and the Argus Leader accountable for what is doesn’t print and how they misrepresent the news they provide their readers. As I mentioned earlier, the truth about Tim Johnson’s votes against gun shows and in approval of the anti-gun Million Mom March was not told by the Argus Leader in 2002, even though I gave that information to David Kranz. Instead they allowed Tony Dean to tell lies and demonize the NRA and its members, who knew the truth about Tim Johnson’s votes.

And just last week, I confronted Randell Beck with the truth about the preschool bill. The truth that SB 115 was not needed. Standards were already written and available. Accreditation was already available and 6 South Dakota preschools had already been accredited by the same far-left organization that helped the DOE with their standards. And I gave Patrick Lalley the business for promoting lies instead of digging dip and exposing the true agenda of the government. They whine about the need for more open government, but the truth about the preschool agenda was already available. I found it, I reported it on this web site, so where was the Argus Leader? We now know that Lalley reads my web site, so he and his paper has no excuse for not reporting the truth about the hidden agenda behind those that pushed the preschool bill.

The Argus Leader is about pushing a far-left agenda. Civility is only used against those they disagree with, as they themselves don’t follow it. And here is the smoking gun. This is what Patrick Lalley said in a September 1990 editorial to the Tempest:

In the race for the Democratic nomination in the 1988 Presidential race it was rather difficult to pick out the issues. Hell, it was difficult to pick out faces let alone issues. But Hart was leading the pack. He didn't need issues, he had image. He was the most promising Democrat since Kennedy--any Kennedy--and he would surely defeat the evil Republicans. Hey, I said it was a simple time.

Lalley calls Republicans evil, and then he thinks he has a right to whine about me saying that the secularist Country Club Republicans are Satan’s gift to the South Dakota Democrat Party.

It is because I find the truth that makes the left look like fools that causes Lalley not to include me on their blogroll. It is the truth that exposes the real agenda of the lying left. And the South Dakota card-carrying members of the lying left want me to go away, because the more truth I find, the more they lie, and that only gives me more ammunition to use against them.

And now Epp is probably thinking…those damn hillbillies.

Democrats are the real racists

From Star Parker:

Racism is one of the more popular allegations for the sleaze sleuths to dredge up. The Democratic operatives who found a few individuals, who for whatever reason want to damage George Allen, must have been thrilled with their find.

Again, whether or not the allegations are true, the operatives have done their job and have hurt Allen and can cash in for themselves. Does anyone think for a minute that these operatives care about blacks and improving their troubled lives?

Forget it. Today race is not an issue that is raised out of concern for the exploited. It is raised to exploit. The objective of the Webb campaign is to slander Allen and generate mistrust. There is no issue here about protecting black interests.

The fact is that Allen, with a conservative agenda to protect life and families, and to keep taxes low and limit the scope of government, would be far better for improving the lot of blacks in America today than his Democratic opponent.

But it would take some thought to appreciate this. The only thought the Webb campaign is interested in is how to smear Allen and brand him as a racist.

With the big-government formulas of the left irrelevant to dealing with black problems today – of family breakdown and 50 percent high-school dropout rates in urban areas – character assassination is the only thing left for Democrats to campaign on.

Voters should understand that today's real racists are those who choose to play political games while blacks languish as a growing underclass in America's cities.

The anti-American movement

From Kevin McCullough:

Evidently, Vanderbilt University's idea of a fair and balanced remembrance of Sept. 11 is to invite nine liberal socialists to bash America for two hours and send everybody home holding their head in shame at being in fact … Americans.

That's how VU marked the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 – seducing students to a meeting titled "After 9/11: A Time for Reflection."

Evidently, the idea of even allowing one mildly right-of-center thinker was too intimidating for the slanted, biased, anti-American carnival barkers that lined up for two hours and told the gathered students why 9/11 was America's fault. Everything from global warming to the treatment of Native Americans was thrown into the mix. Slavery and racism were especially big reasons as stated by one of the weak leftist thinkers.

Yes, Middle Eastern jihadists attacked America because of slavery and race issues. I guess we are to understand that they recognize the race issue in America so well in large part because of the fact they have been systematically hoping for, planning and attempting the annihilation of the Jewish bloodline since the days of Isaac and Ishmael.

What the nine liberals on the panel truly demonstrated was some of the most twisted logic that philosophy, psychology, divinity, history and anthropology professors have ever spoken.

Some examples lifted out of the full video presentation viewable here:

Many fear that 9/11, which was promised to be a turning point, has degenerated into a dark period of American history. The tragedy there has brought unnecessary death and destruction to tens of thousands of people. … Should we be engaged in a war on terror?

– David Wood, professor of philosophy

It's also very difficult to talk about causes when you are not sure what actually happened. Have we been told the truth? Have the questions been answered? Do we have all the information that we need? I don't think we do!

– Beth Conklin, professor of anthropology

I think it is very salutary to realize that it is also the ideology, for example, that animated us in WWII. We were under attack. We were in great peril. And we were going to fight back in self-defense – and we were willing to sacrifice innocents, large numbers, as long as we felt it was in self-defense of the greater cause. What that does, then, is it establishes a common moral ground, a disturbing one, between the extremist who attacked us, because we have also engaged in that kind of logic. We just haven't been willing to do it with the kind of threshold we call extremist in this case.

– Michael Bess, professor of history

The attack on Islam has been misplaced. The most violent religion in the world for the past 500 years at least has been Christianity. We, the baptized people in the name of Jesus, have done more violence – systemic and personal and social and warlike – than any other religious group. …

But simply because our president and others pretend that not facing up to global warming is an option doesn't eradicate the fact that the 900-plus studies around the world have the scientific community in sizable consensus that there is a reality that can be called global warming. …

I came to the conclusion that the United States was the No. 1 enemy of justice and peace in the world. I contend that USA character – psychic, social character – has been badly deranged. We have been deformed and misinformed because, for too long in our history, we denied some of the realities that we ourselves have perpetrated.

– James Lawson, professor of divinity

This event was sponsored and encouraged by the highest administration officials within Vanderbilt University; the chancellor even sent a prepared statement that is read very close to the top of the proceedings. And all of it happened without even the opportunity for the students to hear an opposing view to their collective nuttiness.

The lying Shadow Party and anti-Semitism

From Rush Limbaugh:

All right, now, look, there is an interesting piece, The Prowler column in the American Spectator Online today, and it's all about how -- and this guy, whoever is The Prowler, I don't know who it is -- could be, well, Bob Tyrrell is the owner, operator, head honcho, writes a column. I don't think Bob is the Prowler. Could be The Prowler. He is a prowler, but I don't think he's The Prowler. But whoever this guy is has sources inside the Democratic Party who talk to him. This little piece is one of the most enlightening I have found to find out what's really going on in the minds and hearts of Washington Democrat leaders. The title of this little section here: Not So Fast. "With polling numbers in the Maryland Senate Democrat primary now showing that relative outsider, former congressman and former head of the NAACP Kweisi Mfume is leading Rep. Ben Cardin in some polls above the margin of error, national Democrats are growing progressively pessimistic that they will make serious gains in the November elections.

"Mainstream media outlets have been attempting over the past few weeks to slowly let the air out of a balloon they themselves filled with their abundant hot air about Democratic momentum moving toward a potential retaking of both houses of Congress. 'We probably started that drumbeat too early and we're losing a lot of that momentum,' says a Democratic political strategist. 'You could blame a lot of things, Howard Dean, and some of our more established candidates, but I would blame the Lieberman/Lamont race and the blogosphere. Things just move too fast nowadays.'" I'll tell you, there is more and more concern in the bowels of the Democratic Party over the blogosphere than you can possibly imagine, especially these Democrats that consider themselves centrists like the Democrat Leadership Council. I mean, they are really afraid that this party, depending on what happens with Lament and Lieberman -- and they see no win win there, by the way -- if Lament wins, it's bad news, if Lieberman wins it's bad news for the party, the way this thing is all stretched out.

If you go to some of these Democrat blog sites today you will read some of the most virulent -- MoveOn.org I think it is -- some of the most virulent anti-Semitic comments from the American left about Joe Lieberman that you can imagine. It's gotten to the point that the people that run that site have been asked to take some of these comments down, and the guy that runs this said, "Well, we actually don't think it's our members. We think it's conservatives logging on and making comments trying to foul us up." Yeah, nice try. The fact is there is so much anti-Semitism on the left. I find this so interesting, because it's always been liberals who have told us they're the open-minded among us and they are the tolerant among us, and they are the ones who are not bigots and not racists and not sexists and not homophobes. And yet some of the stuff that appears on these blogs gives the lie to that.

The intolerant Democrats

The Rapid City Journal is reporting that Lee Breard is offering an apology to Stephanie Herseth for the email he sent out regarding her Wikipedia profile:

Breard said Tuesday that he preferred to make an apology directly to Herseth by telephone.

"I don’t think I’m going to e-mail. When you apologize to somebody, it shouldn’t be through e-mail or a letter. It should be one person talking to another," Breard said. "I want to apologize personally for the comment I made. It was overzealous, just out of bounds."

So here is how the Herseth campaign responded:

"We appreciate his willingness to recognize that the home-wrecker part of it was untrue and wrong to circulate," Levsen said. "But sending around unsubstantiated rumors and lies isn’t fact-finding. It’s dirty politics. It’s unfortunate that Lee Breard is only apologizing for some of the lies he sent around about Stephanie Herseth’s personal life."

So this is suppose to be the tolerance of the Democrats. Tolerance is just another one of the lies from the left. And Chad Schuldt, a false prophet for the Shadow Party, says that, "I wouldn’t accept an apology from these jokers either". Schuldt is a fine Christian?