zenpundit.com

” SOCIALISTS OF ALL PARTIES ” THE EU ATTEMPTS TO TAX AMERICANS

From the Washington Post:

If the EU is successful in requiring VAT collection by American firms, observers say it could set an important precedent for taxing Internet commerce in the United States.

Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for the European Commission, agreed. “Some of the opposition to this measure appears to be driven by the fear that it could serve as a precedent for taxing e-commerce within the U.S.,” he said. “

Exactly. The EU has been transmogrified by European socialists from a classical liberal dream of freedom to a relentlessly mestastisizing engine for injecting statism into international law. One of the long term objectives, manifested in the Kyoto Treaty for example, is to put international controls and constraints upon the American economy so that key decisions affecting the future of Americans and their well-being become progressively more transnational in nature, where American presidents, treasury secretaries and Fed chairmen would need European support to enact basic changes in policy. This of course suits NGO activists on the Left side of the Democratic party who relish an extraconstitutional check on such things as immigration, tax, welfare or labor reform that runs counter to their big government agenda.

BUT GEITNER, WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF VIKING REENACTORS CRASHED A REENACTMENT OF GETTYSBURG ?

Geitner Simmons on the newest custom of the midwestern Scandinavian-Americans

NO BLOOD FOR OIL ?

Instapundit links to an article on the misdoings of the French oil giant TotalFinaElf in Africa. This is the company that was also currying favor with Saddam and had signed “precontracts ” to gain concessions in the Iraqi oil fields at Majnoon and Nahar Umar despite UN sanctions. It seems that in it’s Elf Acquitaine incarnation ( the corporation has gone through a number of buy-outs,reorganizations and changes of name) it was controlled by French intelligence.

FINALLY….A BLOGROLL FOR ZENPUNDIT

Gee…it only took me since last February. Someday I’ll even get a comment board running.

LIBERALS AND THE MISSING WMD’S

I’ve been highly skeptical since the ” Bush lied ” WMD frenzy has been whipped up that this whole controversy would amount to much in the long run – much like the last Liberal Iraq frenzy where they called for the Head of Rumsfeld because of the ” looting ” of the national museum the Bush administration ” callously allowed “. Turns out most of the looting was a hoax to cover the secret removal of ancient treasures by Baathist loyalists to secret vaults and coalition forces have recovered most of them. In the case of WMD I’ve been on other sites asking simply why, if WMD’s were a fiction that Putin, Chirac and Schroeder didn’t denounce it and demand Iraq be certified as being free of WMD ? I’ve gotten no takers as of yet and frankly I don’t expect any because the SVK and French intelligence were saying the same things to their officials that the CIA/DIA/NSA/NRO reports said to Bush – that Iraq had illegal WMD programs to some extent.

( Apparently, even in the midst of this new Liberal meme campaign, Hans Blix refuses to state that Iraq did not have WMD in his new report.)

So why the hard spin on the interpretation the Bush administration took from the evidence ? It has a great deal to do with internal polling – the Democratic position on national security with the public is ( rightly so) essentially hopeless, not just with the average voter but even with moderate Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. Here is a recent media poll giving the same results as what Democratic insiders already know.This appears to be a make-or-break issue in the voting booth for swing voters in a narrowly divided electorate and right now Bush has a lock on the issue of national security. The Left does not need to prove this case that Bush allegedly ” lied ” about Iraqi WMD but they do need to chip away at Bush’s lead in this area and create enough of a reasonable doubt in the minds of independents that this issue doesn’t loom so large over 2004 swing voters as it does presently. ( This argument will not affect partisans – finding nuclear bomb components in Kirkuk tomorrow won’t switch a single hard-core Democrat to the Bush column. No WMD’s turning up won’t cause conservative types to vote for Al Sharpton) The Democratic Party is about as trusted in their ability to prosecute the War on Terror with vigor as the GOP is trusted to safeguard a woman’s right to an abortion.

And in both cases, the voters have good reason for their qualms