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The Clinton campaign has got to love having her gorgeous smile blown up.  At first we wondered if the photo was a photoshop makeover -- Nope, it's real.  Here's one we've got.   Apparently HillaryCare doesn't cover trips to the dentist.



All related to this story.

Once again, Hillary Rodham Clinton leads in a poll. This time, she was top choice when people were asked which major 2008 presidential candidate would make the scariest Halloween costume....

Which leads to our HamNation from last week -- The scariest jack-o-lantern ever.

      Does Pakistan have a right to exist?

      Though a Newsweek cover story recently labeled the turbulent South Asian state “the most dangerous nation in the world” no one dares to ask this obvious question.

       In fact, Pakistan represents an arbitrarily constructed, chronically unstable, perpetually embattled, deeply dysfunctional and undeniably shaky creation of the retreating British Empire. Before 1947, the territories eventually designated as “Pakistan” (the name means “Pure Land” in Urdu) comprised an integral part of British India. The hastily and sloppily drawn borders corresponded to no historic nation state, and represented only a desperate concession to Muslim agitators who wanted no part of a newly independent, Hindu majority India. The creation of Pakistan led to an explosion of unspeakable barbarity and bloodshed, with “Independence Riots” claiming a total of at least 500,000 lives (some sources say more than a million). Meanwhile, Pakistan’s creation created the greatest refugee crisis in recent history; UN figures indicate that more than 14 million human beings fled their homes in desperation, with Hindus and Sikhs trying to escape the hostile new Muslim state and find safe haven in India, and Muslims moving from India to Pakistan.

      During most of its 60 year history, Pakistan has suffered from dictatorial military rule – in contrast to the surprisingly durable democracy in its gigantic neighbor, India. The majority of the nation remains both illiterate and impoverished—with little of the spectacular economic progress that his made India into a high tech and commercial powerhouse. In 1971, the eastern portion of Pakistan engaged in a bloody struggle against federal forces to separate itself into the new country of Bangladesh. Border wars with India over the disputed province of Kashmir have flared up on two major occasions, with the issue still unsettled at a time that both combatants possess nuclear weapons. Now a new crisis looms as General Musharraf tries to hold onto power in the face of twin challenges from rabid Islamist fanatics and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, recently returned from exile.

      In light of this history, it’s shocking that few Americans or Europeans question the troubled and divided nation’s existence.

      Instead, agitators on the international left love to challenge the “right to exist” of Israel – a far more stable, prosperous, democratic and, yes, peaceful nation than Pakistan. Though formally recognized as a modern state at almost exactly the same time as Pakistan (1948 rather than 1947), Israel occupies similar borders to the ancient Jewish commonwealth that flourished for more than a thousand years. Moreover the transfer of refugee populations – with 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fleeing the territory of the new state of Israel, and more than 800,000 Jews fleeing Arab states and finding new homes in Israel --- represents scarcely 10% of the massive population shift (involving more than 14 million people) attendant to the birth of Pakistan.

     This doesn’t stop the President of Iran, or the terrorist organizations he openly supports (Hamas and Hezbollah), or twenty states in the Arab League (except for Jordan, Egypt and Morocco), from regularly denying Israel’s very existence – excluding it from maps, referring to the Jewish State as “Occupied Palestine” or “The Zionist Enemy.”

     This Islamist intransigence raises the obvious question: on what basis does Pakistan constitute an “authentic,” “well-established,” “respect-worthy” nation, but Israel does not?

      On every conceivable basis—history, international recognition, authorization by world bodies (The League of Nations supported a Jewish homeland on the site of Israel in 1923, a decade before anyone even proposed the idea of Pakistan), stability, functioning economy, democratic institutions, rule of law, enforceable borders, successful self-defense on multiple occasions, desire of peace with neighbors, support by a majority of its own citizens, respect for religious and ethnic pluralism --- Israel contrasts favorably with “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan.”

      No, the nightmarish, basket-case nation on India’s northwestern border won’t disappear or dissolve. But its persistence (despite horrendous civic unrest, Islamist fanaticism, rampant militarism, and nuclear threats to its neighbors and the rest of the world) should help persuade antagonists and skeptics that Israel will remain at least as permanent a feature on the world stage.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) revealed late Sunday that he will retire upon the conclusion of his current term, regardless of how his long-shot presidential bid turns out, according to the Rocky Mountain News.

Dear Congressman Paul:

Your Presidential campaign has drawn the enthusiastic support of an imposing collection of Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Holocaust Deniers, 9/11 “Truthers” and other paranoid and discredited conspiracists.

Do you welcome- or repudiate – the support of such factions?

More specifically, your columns have been featured for several years in the American Free Press –a publication of the nation’s leading Holocaust Denier and anti-Semitic agitator, Willis Carto. His book club even recommends works that glorify the Nazi SS, and glowingly describe the “comforts and amenities” provided for inmates of Auschwitz.

Have your columns appeared in the American Free Press with your knowledge and approval?

As a Presidential candidate, will you now disassociate yourself, clearly and publicly, from the poisonous propaganda promoted in such publications?

As a guest on my syndicated radio show, you answered my questions directly and fearlessly.

Will you now answer these pressing questions, and eliminate all associations between your campaign and some of the most loathsome fringe groups in American society?

Along with my listeners (and many of your own supporters), I eagerly await your response.

Respectfully, Michael Medved

The Republican Staff on the Ways and Means Committee put this fact sheet together, I feel it is quite enlightening, and wanted to share it with you.

When Chairman Rangel introduced his long-awaited tax legislation yesterday morning, there were certain things he conveniently forgot to mention. Among the things the Democratic Majority doesn’t want you to know about the “Mother of All Tax Hikes”:

1. MARRIAGE PENALTY ON STEROIDS:  The bill imposes a surtax of 4% on single filers with incomes above $150,000 and $200,000 for married couples filing jointly.  After years of fighting efforts to repeal the marriage penalty, the Majority is taking the battle to a new level by putting a massive new marriage penalty into the tax code.

2. KISS YOUR DEDUCTIONS GOODBYE:  The surtax is imposed on adjusted gross income, not taxable income.  That may sound like an arcane difference, but it is an important one.  Now, when filling out your tax return, you add up your income to get your adjusted gross income and then subtract deductions for things like charitable contributions, mortgage interest, state and local taxes, medical expenses, un-reimbursed business expenses, or your standard deduction.  But the surtax is applied to the AGI before you take deductions. So it has the effect of taxing people on items that they can ordinarily deduct. 

3. MAKING THE U.S. A LEADER IN HIGH TAXES:  Combined with the implicit sunset of the lower personal marginal tax rates after 2010, the Democrats’ plan would have the effect of raising the top personal federal marginal income tax rate to more than 44%.  The other 29 OECD countries – essentially other developed nations - have an average personal top marginal tax rate of 35.7%.  In fact, only five OECD countries would have higher top marginal tax rates in 2011 than the U.S. if the Rangel bill is enacted. 

4. SMALL BUSINESS TRIPLE-WHAMMY:  Millions of Americans who own small businesses and who pay taxes on that income on their individual tax returns are going to face a triple-whammy.  First, they will be hit with the 4% surtax on some of their income.  Second, many of them will lose the Section 199 manufacturing deduction that lowers taxes on their business income.  And third, this is happening at the same time as incorporated businesses get an across-the-board rate cut, making it even tougher for these small business engines of job-creation to compete. 

5. FUZZY MATH:  A summary of the Chairman’s bill indicates it repeals the AMT but includes a provision called “Limitation of Benefits” to keep high income individuals from benefiting too much from repeal.  But the Limitation of Benefits RAISES $36 billion more than it would “cost” to repeal the AMT.    So even the alleged tax cut is by any definition a tax hike. 

6. IF A TREE FALLS IN A FOREST…. Like the famous Zen question, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” the Chairman’s bill forces us to ponder how to give tax cuts to people who don’t pay taxes.  The answer is to have other hard-working Americans pay more taxes so the government can write a bigger check to folks who have no income tax liability.  The Chairman’s bill would spend close to $40 billion over the next decade in various forms of “tax cuts” for (e.g., payments from IRS to) people who don’t pay income taxes.

7. TAXING PHANTOM INCOME:  The bill would require businesses of all sizes and sectors to discontinue the use of an accounting regime for their inventory known as LIFO (Last-in-First-Out).  They would have eight years to pay the taxes resulting from the forced revaluation of their inventory, even though they would have had no economic income.  The income might be phantom, but the $106 billion in taxes that will be paid and the associated impacts on businesses certainly won’t be.

8. CAPITAL LOSSES:  Current law provides a top tax rate on long-term capital gains of 15%.  The surtax, because it is applied to Adjusted Gross Income, has the effect of raising the tax rate on long-term gains by another 4% or more for millions of Americans.  This assault on the jobs and growth-producing 2003 tax cut presages what lies ahead as we approach the sunset of the Bush tax cuts.

9. GETTING A HEAD START ON A RUN IN THE WRONG DIRECTION:  In 2003, Congress lowered the top tax rate on dividends to 15%.  All signals suggest that the Democrats want to let those lower rates expire at the end of 2010, sending the top tax rate on dividends back to the top marginal tax rate, which will be 39.6%.  As a helpful head start, the Chairman’s bill subjects dividends to the surtax, so taxpayers can begin to get accustomed to seeing more of their retirement savings eroded by taxes, setting the stage for the leap to 44% or more after 2010. 

10. THE WRONG CHOICE FOR AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS:  The Democrats claim this bill is responsive to Treasury Secretary Paulson’s efforts to advance U.S. competitiveness.  But the Secretary never embraced a proposal to delay the ability of businesses to take deductions for legitimate business expenses.  Despite the Majority’s rhetoric to the contrary, this bill will make it much harder for American companies to compete abroad.

Don't forget about Brian Schweitzer:

Western, populist, pro-gun, culturally conservative. He would help them in Ohio also, and would be very strong in Colorado and New Mexico, I think. The netroots love him (though I don't think the Clintons care about that at all) and he's very charismatic from what I've heard. I don't think it'll be Bayh for that exact reason: he's a total snooze.