The Urban Grind

Now he’s saying he would be open to increasing payroll taxes to pay for Social Security.

Mr. McCain’s shift has come in stages, catching some Republicans by surprise. Speaking with reporters on his campaign bus on July 9, he cited a need to shore up Social Security. “I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table,” he said.

He went a step farther Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” in response to a question about payroll tax increases.

“There is nothing that’s off the table. I have my positions, and I’ll articulate them. But nothing’s off the table,” Mr. McCain said. “I don’t want tax increases. But that doesn’t mean that anything is off the table.”

This senile old geezer, who really belongs in a nursing home, is doing his best to lose the election. At this rate, he won’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing Obama. Up until now, McCain has been sticking with the typically stupid, spineless Republican technique of accusing rivals of raising taxes. And even that he’s been doing half-heartedly. So I would like to know how else he’ll go after Obama. McCain certainly won’t hammer the point that Obama is a closet Muslim and terrorist sympathizer who hates America, along with his evil wife.

I had been meaning to blog about Citizen Journal’s State of the Union party (and obviously the President’s speech) last Tuesday, but never got around to it since I was feeling a bit under the weather. Maybe the other invitees were feeling the same way, since there was a modest turout. Still, aside from a cranky old man in the restaurant who said President Bush should be shot, it turned out to be a nice evening. I was the first one to show up, along with Citizen Journal, then Oleg, a young writer named Jeanette, thenJudith, who had expected a bigger party, and last but not least, the very outgoing, entertaining, charming Susan, whom I encouraged to start a blog of her own.

The good thing about watching a speech with just a few people is that it’s easier to hear everything being said. And it’s also interesting to note other people’s observations as well. What I remember most is when the President was talking about the surveillance program. He basically said that other Presidents have done it (without warrants) and that he will continue doing so rather than risk another attack on American soil. At that point, the Republican side clapped enthusiastically, and the Democrat side was completely silent.

Q and O has more on the reaction of the Democrats. What jumped out at him (actually, Tony Blankley) was how the Democrats wildly applauded when the President brought up the failure of Congress to pass Social Security reform last year.

Dale writes:

The Democratic Party has become an almost oxymoronic party, a party of radical reactionaries. Radical in that the liberalism of traditional Democratic Party politics have become the leftist politics of today. Yet, reactionary in that, while the nation has, over the past three decades shifted to the right, the Democrats have become the party of obstruction when faced with that movement.

Even worse, the Democratic Party has become a party that us utterly bereft of ideas. They hate the war in Iraq, but have no strategy for dealing with it other than withdrawal. They refuse to acknowledge that Social Security, or any other defined-benefits pension plan, is simply not financially sustainable with the country’s current democgraphic makeup. They constantly deride the president’s wild spending, but even a casual persual of their policy suggestions unveils nothing more than higher spending?albeit with higher taxes?for as far as the eye can see. At a time when the European governments are struggling to keep their economies moving, strangled as they are by layers of soclialist policy, the Democrats’ only suggestion is to implement those same policies over here, despite their increasingly apparent failure everywhere they’ve been tried.

Wow! He said it very nicely! I would also add that the Democrat voting base is now comprised of trial lawyers, illegal aliens, felons, malcontent welfare recipients, radical feminists, kooky liberal Jews (I’m a Jew.) in love with FDR and Truman, and finally limousine liberal suburban women who view abortion as a sacrament.

Hat tip: Ron

I won’t be live blogging the event, as live blogging is not my forte, and also because I haven’t yet figured out how to get wireless internet access on my laptop. Still, I, and a group of other right leaning New York bloggers will be watching it tonight from the Black Sheep bar. (Many thanks to Citizen Journal for organizing this event.)

Unfortunately, in this day and age, we have the Angry Left to deal with. And they don’t want the President to be heard. So a group of them (consisting of aging hippie types and Cindy She-hag) plan to cause a ruckus outside the Capitol.

Liberal activists — among them graying leftovers from the Vietnam-era antiwar movement — plan to gather near the Capitol tonight, banging pots and pans to drown out President Bush’s State of the Union address.

Yesterday, opponents of the Iraq war kicked off their latest round of demonstrations with an “Impeachment Forum” held downtown in a private dining room at Busboys and Poets.

Featured speakers were 78-year-old former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; longtime war protester Marcus Raskin, 71, who is head of the Institute for Policy Studies; and Cindy Sheehan, mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq.

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Last week, the group “World Can’t Wait — Drive Out the Bush Regime” was denied a permit to gather on the Mall for security reasons. The group won a federal lawsuit and has been given permission to bang away while Mr. Bush speaks to a joint session of Congress at 9 p.m.

Too bad I don’t live in DC. I would love to heckle them.

In other news, CAIR has sent a letter to the President asking him to be careful about insulting Muslims.

In a letter to President Bush, CAIR Board Chairman Parvez Ahmed suggested that the president be careful to “avoid the use of hot-button terms such as ‘Islamo-fascism,’ ‘militant jihadism,’ ‘Islamic radicalism,’ or ‘totalitarian Islamic empire’” in his Tuesday night speech.

So what is President Bush supposed to call people who blow themselves up, along with Iraqis and Americans in the name of Islam?

If you can’t even name your enemy, that’s a big problem.

On Friday I wrote about how the Democrats were going to torpedo the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito but bringing up his membership in the conservative group Concerned Alumni for Princeton, and how former alumnus/animal rights moonbat Stephen Dujack was due to testify as a witness.

Well it turns out that Mr. Dujack will not be testifying in person after all.

Though it wasn’t immediately clear why Dujack was removed from the Democrats’ witness list, some observers believe he was vulnerable to attacks over an April 2003 Los Angeles Times column he wrote that compared animals killed in slaughterhouses with victims of the Holocaust.

Makes sense to me. I mean, how seriously can one take a person the treatment of animals slaughtered for food to the Holocaust? I have the feeling Judge Alito will be confirmed.

Scientists at Harvard have found a way to transform skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells.

The technique uses laboratory-grown human embryonic stem cells ? such as the ones that President Bush has already approved for use by federally funded researchers ? to “reprogram” the genes in a person’s skin cell, turning that skin cell into an embryonic stem cell itself.

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Until now, the only way to turn a person’s ordinary cell into a “personalized” stem cell such as this was to turn that ordinary cell into an embryo first and later destroy the embryo to retrieve the new stem cells growing inside ? a process widely known as “therapeutic cloning.”

The pro abortion crowd I’m sure will make light of this.

Via Neal Boortz

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a plan designed to encourage middle- and lower-income Americans to save a larger chunk of their paychecks for retirement.

The plan, dubbed “AmeriSave,” would offer workers a number of savings-oriented incentives designed to supplement Social Security. Backers offered no immediate estimate of the plan’s cost.

“AmeriSave will help middle-class families build retirement security by expanding opportunities to save, and ensuring pension fairness, guaranteeing workers receive the benefits that they have been promised after a lifetime of hard work,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.

Under the plan, workers would receive a dollar-for-dollar match for the first $1,000 contributed to an IRA, 401(k), or similar plan. The recipient would receive the match after they filed a tax return, with the funds directed into their retirement savings account.

The plan would also provide tax incentives aimed at encouraging small businesses to establish 401(k) accounts, IRAs and other retirement vehicles. It would also encourage employers to automatically enroll workers in 401(k) plans; workers would be able to opt out of the plans.

The retirement-oriented package offered no changes to the Social Security program. Democrats have vowed not to offer a plan to address the program’s long-term solvency woes unless President Bush rescinds his call to create private investment accounts out of the payroll taxes used to fund the Social Security system.

Never mind where the money for this dollar to dollar match is to come from (obviously the EEVIL “rich” people). When in doubt, simply raise taxes to buy votes.

Two Republican politicians are leading an effort to fix Social Security.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) lead this effort. They would create ?Growing Real Ownership for Workers? accounts that would be voluntary, personally owned, and inheritable. While these GROW accounts would be smaller than those President Bush advocates (4 percentage points of each participant?s 12.4 percent employer/employee payroll tax), they would be financed by the Social Security surplus, namely taxes collected above and beyond the system?s benefit payments.

DeRoy Murdocks goes on to disabuse people of the notion that the money is held in a trust fund for people when they retire:

This money is not invested in stocks, real estate, or even Picassos. Since 1983, Congress has spent $1.67 trillion of this cash on food stamps, cruise missiles, the space shuttle, Amtrak, etc. In its place, non-traded ?special issue Treasury notes? sit in the so-called Social Security Trust Fund, a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, West Virginia. These pieces of paper obligate future Congresses to collect taxes tomorrow to finance Congress? bipartisan spendaholism today. There are no underlying, marketable assets involved ? just the anticipated political will of future elected officials to shake down citizens who currently populate America?s K-12 classrooms.

A while back, when I used to have my blog hosted on Blogspot, I had a troll who disagreed with me regarding Social Security. He viewed Bush’s effort to promote partial privatization as a sneaky way to axe the whole program, which he felt was the most successful part of FDR’s New Deal. I told him I didn’t view Social Security as sacrosanct (more or less)

But now that I look back on that whole exchange, I think I should have told him something like this.