What to expect when you're expecting

Ron Dellums, the current mayor of Oakland, CA, is a lot like Obama...both are on the left, they have a love for high taxes and the typical liberal agenda and neither really had any experience prior to taking the leadership job they ran for.

If you want to know what Obama will do to the US, just take a look at what Dellums had done for Oakland. For example...

Oakland deficit could reach $50 million

Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, July 19, 2008


Oakland's budget deficit is on course to more than triple the $15 million shortfall that former City Administrator Deborah Edgerly figured in the city's current spending plan, according to new projections obtained by The Chronicle.

Edgerly, whom Mayor Ron Dellums fired July 1 amid a police investigation into whether she tipped her nephew to a gang probe, may have overestimated city revenues for the current fiscal year by $38 million, according to a July 17 finance department report.

In addition, the city would not receive $12 million in planned revenue if the recent mail vote approving an increase in the city's lighting and landscaping tax is invalidated - bringing the city's revenue shortfall this year to nearly $50 million, or 10 percent of Oakland's $500 million general fund.

City Council members Ignacio De La Fuente and Jean Quan, as well as Acting City Administrator Dan Lindheim, said Friday that they thought Edgerly's budget projections had been overly optimistic.

The council and mayor approved the budget after agreeing to close Edgerly's projected $15 million deficit by cutting costs in all departments, leaving 28 vacant jobs unfilled and forcing all nonessential city employees to take five days off without pay in December.

But officials said Friday that the dire forecast may force them to lay off employees and cut services, difficult decisions they say they will make after returning from summer recess and begin poring over Oakland's finances.

"We're waiting anxiously for some of the real balances," Council President De La Fuente said Friday. "We're going to have to prioritize and remember (that) we're responsible for providing the basics - with public safety being No. 1. We're going to have to make some tough decisions."

Edgerly's office in May projected that revenue from sales taxes, property taxes and real estate transfer taxes would increase this fiscal year from 2007-08.

Lindheim, at Dellums' direction, has ordered a complete review of the city's budget situation. Dellums' office will announce changes in the city's financial plans next week, Lindheim said Friday.

"I've told council and department directors I expect we will come back in the fall with a revised budget," Lindheim said. "I'm presuming we're going to be making additional cuts."

Oakland, like cities across the nation, is feeling the pinch of the downturn in the housing market and a softening in consumer spending. City officials said the recent sale of Brandywine Realty Trust, a real estate investment firm with a regional office in Oakland, could net the city $6 million in property transfer taxes, lessening the blow a bit.

Quan, who chairs the council's Finance and Management Committee, said she has been saying for months that Edgerly was overly optimistic in her budget projections, a point she said fell on deaf ears.

"I warned the council, but the response I got was people were OK with it," Quan said Friday. "They said she had been right in the past.

"If these numbers hold, we're talking about cutting city staff by 5 to 10 percent," Quan said. "We'll keep safety first. You're not going to see a reduction in police officers, but we may have to cut support staff, such as technicians, who are a critical component in helping with investigations."

Library staff may also be cut, along with programs for senior citizens and pothole repairs, Quan said.

Before she was fired, Edgerly had planned to retire July 31, a month after the city's new budget took effect.

"There is an incentive for all public figures to make things look better than they may be," Lindheim said Friday. "The problem anyone dealing with budgets has to confront is that the worse you portray the situation, the greater the cuts you have to make. No one wants to make major cuts."

Meanwhile, the council will meet in closed session Tuesday to discuss a citizen challenge to the vote count in the spring election to raise the lighting and landscaping property tax to pay for the upkeep of parks, medians and streetlights. At issue is whether city ballot-counters gave too much weight to the vote of the Port of Oakland.

"There are very serious concerns and allegations by citizens that the vote count was not accurate," De La Fuente said. "We're taking it very seriously."

Lindheim said Dellums believes the election was valid and the vote should stand.

Oakland's new budget woes

Former City Administrator Deborah Edgerly may have overstated revenue projections for the current fiscal year by $38 million, a new city report says. Here are her estimates for three key revenue sources, compared with those made by county officials and city consultants:

Edgerly's projections

-- Sales tax: $51.8 million

-- Property tax: $136.3 million

-- Property transfer tax: $44.9 million

Projections by city consultants and Alameda County assessor's office

-- Sales tax: $43.8 million

-- Property tax: $129.7 million

-- Property transfer tax: $27.2 million

Source: Oakland Finance and Management Agency

Is this the change we should expect?

By now we've all heard about Barack Obama's reaction to a recent cover of New Yorker magazine. As a reminder, Obama called the cover "offensive".

I don't understand what is offensive about a political cartoon depicting a candidate for President of the United States. If the past eight years has shown us anything, it's that all depictions of the President are sacred objects and political cartoons are the top of the sacred heap (see, e.g., Ted Rall, who penned cartoons depicting President Reagan burning in hell, Condi Rice as a "house nigga" and Pat Tillman as an "idiot" and "sap).

So how is it that any cartoon of a candidate for President can be offensive?

Oh, right...in the same way that some cartoons are so "offensive" as to justify murderous riots and beheadings...



He may not be a Muslim but he seems to think that he should be treated more like Mohammed than the President of the United States when it comes to cartoons.

Anyone But Mary Nejedly Piepho

The Zhid has been pretty vocal in his opposition to Jerry McNerney, primarily as a result of McNerney being an absolute sellout on the environment.

Just to show that the Zhid's pro-environment agenda ignores party lines, the Zhid is announcing his opposition to the re-election of Contra Costa County District 3 Supervisor Mary Nejedly Piepho.

Piepho, a Republican, is up for re-election this year and the Zhid considers her to be one of the most vile enemies of the local environment.

Why?

This is why.

Piepho makes the following claim as her campaign statement:

As a co-author of the county’s Urban Limit Line, I am protecting open spaces and controlling sprawl to maintain our high quality of life.

While she may have been a co-author of the Urban Limit Line, she also is one of the four Contra Costa County Supervisors who immediately authorized a study that would lead to the absolute evisceration of the Urban Limit Line.

Now, after years of often contentious political battles to limit suburban sprawl, four of the five Contra Costa County supervisors are considering a loophole that could lead to numerous residential developments outside the limit line.

The supervisors voted 4-1 to proceed with a study that would allow 193 mostly luxury homes to be built on 770 acres of land in the Tassajara Valley, east of Danville and San Ramon.

Any politician who helps to author law, that is approved by voters in overwhelming numbers, and then goes behind the backs of the voters to collaborate with and aid the developers who are trying to act in contravention of that law is a hypocrite, a shill and an enemy of the voters and the environment.

As the Contra Costa County Times said about Piepho's actions:

This is an issue that deserves far more public attention as the study moves forward. Voters need to be fully aware of what is going on and not allow their elected supervisors to undermine Measure J and Contra Costa County's urban limit line.

That Piepho acted to subvert the will of the voters by authorizing the New Farm study is bad enough; that she now claims she is protecting open spaces and controlling sprawl as part of the Urban Limit Line is an outright lie and an affront to all voters.

Piepho must go.

And for those of you who would like to get up to speed on the attempts to undermine the Urban Limit Line, and Piepho's refusal to support the clearly stated will of the voters who overwhelmingly approved the Urban Limit Line, this article is quite good.

Assemblyman decries city's effort to control Tassajara
Jeanine Benca

Assemblyman Guy Houston on Tuesday publicly lambasted San Ramon's advance on the Tassajara Valley and challenged his political rival, Contra Costa County Supervisor Mary Piepho, to rein in the city's efforts to control the large undeveloped area.

"The city of San Ramon is going about this all wrong," said Houston of San Ramon's recent attempt to bring the 4,900-acre Tassajara Valley under its "sphere of influence."

He said Piepho, who represents San Ramon on the Board of Supervisors -- and with whom Houston hopes to battle this fall for that seat -- should "ask San Ramon to withdraw its (sphere of influence) application" from the Local Agency Formation Commission.

"In addition, I call on Supervisor Piepho to go to the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors and rescind any current studies or actions

that infringe on the voter-approved urban limit line," Houston said.

He referred to New Farm, a controversial mixed residential/ agricultural development of 194 housing units proposed in the Tassajara Valley.

Supervisors approved in July a study to determine whether the project violates the county's voter-approved urban limit line, which bars development from the Tassajara Valley until at least 2026.

Piepho reiterated Tuesday her position that the study is just that -- a study, and not a guarantee that the development will be approved.

"I do support the urban limit line. I have not said I support New Farm or any other development in the Tassajara Valley, and I do have great concerns about the infrastructurenot supporting further development in that area," she said.

"The question before us is, does (New Farm) meet the county's general plan, and that's what we're looking at." [Gee, Piepho, you claim co-authorship of the law and you are now saying that you don't understand something as obvious as what would constitute an obvious breach of the law??? Ed.]

About San Ramon's sphere of influence attempt, Piepho said, "I understand that San Ramon is acting upon the vote of their community and what their voters have said they want for their future planning, and I respect that. I respect the vote of the people." [No, Piepho, the county as a whole voted to stop development in the Tassajara Valley and a small constituency, San Ramon, is attempting to undermine the will of the county's voters. You should respect THAT will of the people, you hypocrite. Ed.]

San Ramon's current general plan calls for the city to re- evaluate its urban growth boundary in 2010. Residents will be asked to vote on whether they would support annexation and eventual development of the rural stretch east of city lines.

But Houston, a San Ramon resident, said residents of his city already have declared their intent to leave the Tassajara Valley as is -- through their support of Measure L, the 2006 measure that extended the county's urban line to 2026.

"I respect what the voters did," said Houston, a former mayor of Dublin. [Note to Piepho-this is how you respect the will of the voters. Ed.]

He criticized San Ramon's leaders for not including input from Dublin or Danville -- neighboring cities that border the Tassajara Valley -- in an environmental report for the city's sphere of influence application.

Last week, staff of LAFCO sent San Ramon leaders a letter criticizing the city's environmental report as incomplete in its failure to address the potential for "future development" of the Tassajara Valley.

San Ramon Mayor H. Abram Wilson said Tuesday that, in response to LAFCO's letter and concerns aired by neighboring jurisdictions, the city's planned March 11 public hearing on the environmental report has been canceled.

The city will postpone its sphere of influence application until the City Council, San Ramon staff and officials from neighboring jurisdictions have had a chance to "sit down and talk," Wilson said.

"More than anything else, I do believe that there is and has been a misunderstanding of San Ramon's position, so I will do everything I can to make sure that everyone feels a comfort level."

He reiterated that San Ramon officials have "no intention of trying to develop the Tassajara Valley.

"We don't have any thoughts of building anything. We're not in a rush to do anything. We're very cognizant that everyone has a say."

And Piepho, if you find anything inaccurate in this post, you are welcome to advise the Zhid at vengefulzhid@yahoo.com

Turkey hunting pics

Though no turkeys lost their miserable lives, the Zhid spent the morning at Running Deer Ranch, up in the hills above Lake Berryessa hunting the evil fowl beasts. Wilderness Unlimited gets kudos for the beautiful hunting grounds.

Because Affe has a thing for heavy breathing, here's the topo map of the area hunted. I started at about lake level and went up anderson canyon into the hills, following a creek and climbing up deer trails to the peaks and traversing them back towards the lake. I went through a 70 ounce camelback before noon...

View Larger Map


As always, click each picture for an enlargement. And in one of the pics, the Zhid, in full camo, is visible! Jerry McNerney, eat your heart out!

And if you even think about touching our sheep...

Osama bin Laden released an audiotape yesterday that may have been the most brilliant summary of how things rank in the scale of Islamic "Oh no you didn't!"

Here's his quote:

"Although our tragedy in your killing of our women and children is a very great one, it paled when you went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings," he said. "This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe."

Ok, so let's make sure everyone understands.

In Islam, it's bad to kill women and children.

But to give you some perspective on HOW bad it is, killing women and children "pales" in comparison to reprinting cartoons.

Now, as far as I can tell, printing cartoons, even offensive ones, is pretty much at the bottom of the list of things you shouldn't do for most other cultures.

So either Islam has virtually no concern for women and children or Islam knows something about cartoons that we don't know.

I wonder what reaction they'd have to a cartoon of Mohammed flying a jetliner into a kindergarten? Would it matter if it was a Jewish kindergarten?

Heckuva sense of priority in Islam...

You Have The Right To Remain Silent.

From CNN's coverage of the Supreme Court arguments on the Heller case:

But Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pennsylvania, said before the hearing that the government had the right to limit gun ownership.

"There should be reasonable control for access to guns and particularly handguns," he said. "Even if [the Supreme Court finds] that people have the right to bear arms, governments have a right to reasonable controls on firearms -- where and under what circumstances people have a right to have them."

The emphasis is mine.

Does anyone else see the problem with Fattah's statement? He says that if the Supreme Court finds that gun ownership is a right, the government should still have the power to dictate who can have a gun and under what circumstances.

WHAT KIND OF RIGHT IS THAT?

It's like saying "you have a right to free speech, so long as the government can dictate who says what and under what circumstances they speak."

I am never surprised by how clueless Democrats are. What surprises me is that people actually listen to what they say.

Speaking of which, I read the text of Obama's speech today. I have to say that the speech definitely changed my mind. The problem for Obama is that it changed whatever positive feelings I had about him into negative ones.

Obama's speech starts out with the right approach, but instead of absolutely distancing himself from Reverend Wright, he first wags his finger at the reverend and then says, in essence, that he's not going to abandon the reverend any more than he'd abandon the black community and spells out all the wonderful things the reverend and church have done. In many ways, he seems to have engaged in a backdoor defense of what the reverend said (and also doesn't even address the most shocking thing that the pastor said with regard to 9/11 being a time when America's chickens came home to roost).

If this is Obama's way of providing comfort, it has backfired. I now think that this man supports black radicalism and is so arrogant that he thinks he can tell us "I am what I appear to be" and we have to accept it.

Worse, though, was the pandering to the white community. I have never before seen Obama bring up the white side of his family so much. It's pretty clear that in trying to prove that he isn't a black radical, like his pastor, Obama will hold up the side of the family that he has so conveniently ignored throughout the campaign.

I am left with the impression that Obama is a man who will excuse the most heinous and inflammatory statements of a certain segment (either radical black or leftist, I'm not really sure which) and tell us that we're not seeing what we think we're seeing.

Overall, a very disingenuous, and very frightening, speech.

McNerney for Congress?

I know that Jerry McNerney's staff reads this blog, so I am going to give Jerry one final chance to convince me and the rest of the moderate/conservative voters in his district that he is worth re-electing.

At this point I am inclined to not vote for McNerney, for the reasons that are discussed in this post. Jerry took a hard turn to the left after he was put in office by the San Francisco leftists and he has done nothing to show us that he is anything other than Nancy Pelosi's liberal lap dog.

As I've pointed out before, McNerney is the worst kind of liberal, as he supports the distasteful policies of the left but he refuses to do anything to protect the environment in his district. He has sold out to developers.

So we have a perfect test to see whether Jerry is really willing to protect the interests of the people in his district. The City of San Ramon recently launched an attack on rural Tassajara Valley. Read the article at the link, as it's a very good overview of the situation

Jerry now has a chance to rescue his reputation. Come on, Jerry, speak out on this issue. Tell San Ramon to back off and respect the urban limit line. If you again remain silent, we have no choice but to go with Dean Andal.

Maybe Andal will be just as bad for the environment as you are, Jerry, but at least he isn't Nancy Pelosi's puppet.

Jerry's staff can send me an outline of his plan to stop San Ramon's attempt to destroy the Tassajra Valley via email at vengefulzhid@yahoo.com.

No, I'm not surprised, but it still pisses me off.

So a Palestinian Arab terrorist goes into a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem and slaughters 8 or more Jewish boys and wounds at least that many and what are the mainstream media sources saying?

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The attack was greeted with celebrations in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip after a recent Israeli offensive there that killed more than 120 Palestinians, about half of them civilians.

or how about this

The seminary is the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe quarter at the entrance to Jerusalem, a prestigious center of Jewish studies identified with the leadership of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank.

It was founded by the late Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Hacohen Kook, the movement's spiritual founder, and serves some 400 high school students and young Israeli soldiers, and many of them carry arms.

It's pretty clear that there will be no reporting on this story unless the readers are forcefed the ideas that the terrorist attacks are actually justifiable revenge and that every Jew in Israel is either a settler or a soldier or both, so there are no innocent civilians.

Fucking media, I swear...

UPDATE

Several of the Zhid's dense readers didn't quite understand the point. Let the Zhid give an example...

Had the AP covered the Israeli strikes in Gaza in the same manner as they covered the Palestinian Arab terrorist attack in Jerusalem, it would have read something like this...

"Israeli military forces launched raids in Gaza today against Palestinian targets in response to the slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians, killing nearly 120 Palestinians. Approximately half of the Palestinian casualties were members of Hamas' armed units while the other half of the Palestinian casualties were civilians, all of whom attend mosques and schools that support and provide training for terror attacks against Jews."

Confused

Just some random, Saturday morning musings.

Liberals say that there is no legitimate need for individual gun rights, as the government is there to protect us.

Liberals say that Bush has repeatedly violated law and the constitution and has stripped us of our civil rights.

Liberals say that informal militias in Iraq have beat the US military.

And then, the liberals conclude that only the government has a right to be armed.

What am I missing?

Going a bit further with this, if you ever dig into the "foodie" culture, you'll see that the people who are really into exotic food, especially meats, with wild game being prized, tend to be liberal.

And liberals are opposed to...hunting.

Again, what am I missing?

If conservatives really wanted to deprive the population of civil rights and oppress minorities, wouldn't the conservatives want an unarmed populace?

So, could it be that the policies speak louder than the stereotypes?

Eclipse pics

Taken on a cheap digital camera with the lens shoved against the eyepiece of a cheap telescope...click on individual pictures for enlargements.

Jerry McNerney Hates The Bill Of Rights

55 Senators and 250 Representatives signed an amici curiae brief in support of a challenge to the Bill of Rights by the District of Columbia. 305 members of Congress had the courage to stand firm in protecting your constitutional rights.

Jerry McNerney refused to sign the brief.

Remember when McNerney refused to sign a farm support reform bill that would have provided federal funds to protect the local environment?

Remember how McNerney embraced the Code Pink leftists, the very ones who are currently attacking the US Marines in Berkeley?

Remember how McNerney refused to speak up to stop an attempt to violate the will of the voters in the 11th District?

Seems like McNerney has a clear pattern of not supporting anything that is important to the core constituency of his district.

McNerney, the lapdog of Pelosi...This man represents San Francisco or Berkeley, but he doesn't represent the good people of the 11th District.

They didn't even get to wander there for 40 years...

This makes the Zhid's heart flutter. Egypt declares "Get these bloodthirsty, parasitic hate mongering terrorists out of our territory and back into Gaza, where they can be poor, oppressed victims again!"

'Get Hamas gunmen out of Sinai'
Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 30, 2008

Egypt has issued an ultimatum to Hamas to pull back dozens of Gazan gunmen who are reported to have crossed into Egypt over the past week.

Palestinian Authority security officials in Ramallah said 300-500 gunmen, most of them belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, were refusing to return to the Gaza Strip.

The officials said the gunmen had sought refuge with Beduin tribes and Egyptian families in a number of places in Sinai.

"The Egyptian authorities have issued an ultimatum to Hamas to return all the gunmen by this weekend," the officials told The Jerusalem Post. "According to our sources, the Egyptians are very serious this time."

In the past few days, the officials added, the Egyptian authorities had detained more than 100 armed Palestinians. Most of the detainees were returned to the Gaza Strip after their weapons were confiscated, officials said.

According to the officials, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups had succeeded in bringing tons of explosives and various weapons into Gaza over the past week. They said tons of drugs had also made their way into the Strip from Sinai.

The Egyptians have also foiled an attempt by Hamas members to raise Palestinian and Hamas flags on top of several government institutions in Sinai's Rafah and el-Arish.

The semi-official Al-Ahram newspaper reported that the attempt to place the flags was seen as a serious "provocation" by many Egyptians.

Hassan Issa, a member of the Egyptian parliament, accused Hamas of jeopardizing his country's security. "Hamas has violated our sovereignty and this is totally unacceptable," he said. "This move poses a real threat to Egypt's national security."

Arab diplomats in Cairo estimated that around 10,000 Palestinians were still in Sinai, six days after the barrier separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt was destroyed.

One diplomat told the Post that Hamas supporters were trying to create the impression that they had succeeded in "liberating" Egyptian territory.

"The Hamas people apparently forgot that they had invaded Egypt, and not Israel," he said. "The Egyptians are running out patience."

The diplomat predicted that the Egyptians would rebuke Hamas leaders who were due to arrive in Cairo on Wednesday for talks on the border crisis. The delegation will be headed by Syria-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas is also due to visit Cairo on Wednesday. However, his aides said he had no intention of meeting with Hamas representative.

The talks in Cairo will focus on ending the anarchy along the Gaza-Sinai border. The Egyptians will try to persuade Hamas to agree to the return of Abbas's forces to the Rafah border crossing. But Hamas reiterated Tuesday its opposition to such a move. The Islamist group also opposes the presence of international monitors at the border.

What is the nutritional value of a pack of Marlboros?

I'm sure you've read all about the horrible suffering of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza. How they are being starved to death by Israel. How the evil Israelis are denying them access to essentials. How they had to blow up the border with Egypt, out of desperation, to feed their hungry children.

Let's go to the video to see how that's working out...

Wow, I had no idea Marlboro made baby formula.

A weekend off road

This weekend consisted of a fruitless duck hunt at Grizzly (where I walked up to a number of pheasant, who seemed to know that the season for them was over), and then a lot of bashing the truck through the muddy trails at Grizzly, and topped off by a mt bike ride on muddy Mt. Diablo

President Bush in Israel

So President Bush was in Israel and made a trip to the Wailing Wall. As he stood there, he thought for a moment about the purpose of his trip and how he wanted to create a lasting legacy for his Presidency.

With that, he turned to the crowd gathered behind him and called out "MR. OLMERT, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"

The Sound of One Zhid Quacking

I went duck hunting yesterday. I forgot how calling ducks takes a lot of practice/skill.

See for yourself.

The Real Environmentalists

Something that I've noticed in the course of hunting this year is the amount of natural habitat that has been preserved in the local area. I've been hunting a lot at Grizzly and some other places in the delta and it's pretty impressive to see the thousands of acres that are untouched, though surrounded by the ravages of urban development.

The thing that came to mind is who is behind the protection of the environment.

Gun owners.

Yep, hunters are the ones who are responsible for the preservation of the environment. While the liberals talk a good game, they're the ones who are behind a lot of the destruction of land in this area (see, e.g., the way Jerry McNerney and other Democrat politicians have been bought off by developers or how the most liberal of cities, such as Oakland, have allowed developers to pave over every inch of open space).

Meanwhile, we conservative gun owners (and it is the case that most, though not all, hunters are conservative) are the ones who depend on land being preserved and directly fund and otherwise contribute to the well being of wildlife stocks and their habitat.

We gun owners pay dues to groups, like Ducks Unlimited, that protect the environment and wildlife. We buy hunting licenses and stamps, which directly fund environmental preservation of game habitats. We use the state lands to hunt and pay the use fees, which go, again, to protecting and expanding the game habitat. We are out there monitoring the environment and are the first line of defense against attacks on the environment.

Meanwhile, the liberals are the ones who are doing things like selling off open space to developers to fund special interest social programs. Just look at how McNerney has sold us out to the developers if you want an example of this (just do a search for McNerney on this blog).

Funny, ain't it, liberals of the Bay Area, that as you try to grab our guns and pave over our land, destroying the last bits of habitat for wildlife, under the banner of being green and environmentally friendly, it is actually us, the conservative gun owners, who are the guardians of the environment.

That's All She Wrote

The 2007 pheasant season is now in the books for the Zhid and unfortunately it was a total zero. The Zhid went out to Grizzly Island today for the last weekend of the season and while there was plenty of mud to have fun with in the truck,

the Zhid was again able to only kick up a hen. Though the Zhid would have liked to have brought back birds, there is no such thing as a bad day hunting, so the season was a success.

Along the way the Zhid scouted some placed to hunt ducks (hence the waders and decoys in the picture...since the ducks were not in good numbers today there was no chance to use said waders and decoys). Next week the Zhid will likely try a mid-week duck hunt.

And in the meantime, here's a video to amuse the Zhid's loyal readers. The Zhid tends to start shooting at anything after it looks like the hunt will not be successful. In this case, the Zhid propped up the camera on his knee while shooting into a mound of dirt and the effect of the camera falling off the knee is a bit of comedy to this Zhid's mind.

The Wall Street Journal Lays Out The Facts On The Rich And Taxes

Outstanding work.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK


Taxes and Income
December 17, 2007; Page A20

Every Democrat running for President wants to raise taxes on "the rich," but they will have to do something miraculous to outtax President Bush. Based on the latest available tax data, no Administration in modern history has done more to pry tax revenue from the wealthy.

Last week the Congressional Budget Office joined the IRS in releasing tax numbers for 2005, and part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all up substantially since 1990, and even somewhat since 2000. Meanwhile, Americans with an income below the median -- half of all households -- paid a mere 3% of all income taxes in 2005. The richest 1.3 million tax-filers -- those Americans with adjusted gross incomes of more than $365,000 in 2005 -- paid more income tax than all of the 66 million American tax filers below the median in income. Ten times more.


For the political left and most of the media, this means only that the rich are getting richer, so of course they're paying more taxes. And it is true that the top earners have increased their share of total income. Yet, as the nearby table shows, the rich showed more rapid gains in reported income shares in the 1990s than in the first half of this decade. The share of the richest 1% jumped to 20.8% of total income in 2000, from 14% in 1990, but increased only slightly to 21.2% in 2005. This makes it hard to pin their claim of "rising inequality" on the Bush tax cuts, though the income redistributionists are trying. By this measure, the Clinton years were far worse for "inequality."

Notably, however, the share of taxes paid by the top 1% has kept climbing this decade -- to 39.4% in 2005, from 37.4% in 2000. The share paid by the top 5% has increased even more rapidly. In other words, despite the tax reductions of 2001 and 2003, the rich saw their share of taxes paid rise at a faster rate than their share of income. How could this be?

One explanation is that the Bush tax cuts reduced the income tax liability of middle and lower income households by more proportionately than the rich. The average family of four with an income of $40,000 saw its income tax liability fall by about $2,052 a year from the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

The IRS statistics also tell a more complicated economic story than the media claim. First, America continues to be a society of upward income mobility. Over the past decade, millions of Americans have joined the once highly exclusive club of six- and seven-figure earners. Some 304,000 Americans earned $1 million or more in annual income in 2005, compared to 110,000 in 1996 and 176,000 in 2000. Because there is no cap on the top income share, this increase in millionaires pushes the top income (and taxes paid) share higher. The number of millionaire households in net worth also increased to nine million in 2006, up from six million in 2001, according to TNS, a global market research firm.

Liberals decry this as proof of a new "gilded age." But we'd say these gains are a sign that more Americans are joining the ranks of the truly affluent. More than 13 million American households, or about one in 10, had an income of more than $100,000 a year in 2005. This is the kind of upward mobility that a dynamic society should want because it means that incomes aren't stagnant and opportunity continues to exist.

Keep in mind as well that the IRS only records the income that taxpayers report. Its data don't include income that the rich hide in tax shelters or otherwise defer. And there is evidence that lower tax rates since 1981 have caused the rich to declare more of what they earn. In 1980, when the top income tax rate was 70%, the richest 1% paid only 19% of all income taxes; now, with a top rate of 35%, they pay more than double that share. With lower rates and fewer tax loopholes after the 1986 reform, there is less incentive to shelter income to avoid tax.

The IRS figures are also misleading because they include income that can make many Americans rich for only a single year. In 2005, for example, taxpayers earned an estimated $600 billion in income from capital gains, which is reported on tax forms as part of adjustable gross income. But that might include the one-time gain from a middle-class senior couple that has lived modestly for decades but suddenly retires and sells the family business or home for $1 million or more. They may be "rich" in Hillary Clinton's definition of the term, but in fact they are benefiting in one tax year from a lifetime of hard work and thrift.

The amount of capital gains declared on tax forms has doubled since the tax rate was cut to 15% from 20% in 2003, which has also contributed to more Americans being "rich." Dividend income has also increased by at least 50% since that rate was cut to 15% from nearly 40% in 2003. So part of the income gains of the rich are simply a result of assets that have been converted into taxable income -- in part because of lower tax rates.

We hate to break up the media's egalitarian chorus with these details, but facts are facts. If Democrats really want to soak the rich, they'll keep tax rates where they are, or, better, lower them some more.

Still 0 for the Pheasant Season, but better results on paper

Affe dragged me out to the Sacramento Valley Shooting Center, where we shot beyond 100 yards for the first time.

Though I believe I pissed off some of the other long range shooters with my rapid fire on the M1A and Garand, that was only after I had some nice precision shooting with the new GA Precision Rock. Here are the results from the first time at 200 yards, shooting 168 gr Black Hills. I had to adjust the scope for the first three shots but then I shot two groups of five and I think it's pretty clear that they were two very nice, tight groups.



Oh, by the way, Jerry McNerney continues to be an enemy of the environment.

Still 0 for the Pheasant Season

I went hunting this morning at Twitchell Island. No dog, no Affe, no birds. I did see a fat rooster running through the brush, but without a dog or Polak it was the bird's lucky day. Beautiful area (a recently harvested corn field of about 1,000 acres)


and a lot of migrating waterfowl overhead.

Affe and I went Pheasant Hunting Today and One Picture Tells It All

And a few others, just to provide a bit of the flavor of the day.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

So after a long time talking about it, I finally gave in and bought a GA Precision rifle. It's a Rock model in an AICS 1.5 chassis and a deeply fluted Mike Rock barrel (hence the name, The Rock).

I ended up taking the Leupold Mark 4 scope off of the M1A (which was worked on by GA Precision, though not built by them) and putting it on the Rock, not knowing whether I wanted to stay with that scope or maybe get a nicer scope for the new rifle. The truth is that I've never been totally thrilled with the performance of the M1A and wasn't sure whether perhaps the scope was partially the problem.

To tell even more truth, I've never really bought into the hype about custom rifles being so much better than production rifles. For example, I think my Sig SHR 970 is a damn good shooting rifle and it's not a custom piece. But because I'm lucky enough to have some cash to spare and the Rock was being sold by GAP as a used rifle, I jumped on it and figured if it wasn't anything special I'd have learned my lesson.

I've had a long term fascination with the AICS chassis, so I didn't think there was a lot to lose.

Fast forward the 10 days for the idiotic California waiting period and we arrive at yesterday, when Affe and I picked up the rifle from the FFL transfer dealer. Oh, yeah, Affe also bought a new rifle yesterday, but I'll wait for him to break that news.

Last night I worked on getting the scope set up and after a fitful night sleeping and thinking about the first range day with the new rifle I headed out to my range late this afternoon. It was pretty windy and quite warm for November (83 degrees, in fact), and the target stands were dancing around a bit. You can see how the wind was blowing in this picture of the Zhid's truck, with the range flag (and Mt. Diablo) in the background. As always, click on a picture for an enlargement.




















I set up at the bench and knew that dialing in this scope was going to take a while, as I always have trouble with scopes on the first shoot.



















It did take me a good number of shots before I had the scope dialed in, and to cut to the chase, here's how it ended up shooting. I was using Black Hills 168 gr.

That seems to me to be a three shot group of at or less than .5 MOA, which is what GAP guarantees (the shot to the right in the picture is part of my scope dialing in string, it wasn't a flyer from the group under the micrometer).

Here's a picture of the string of shots I took to get the scope dialed in (they're the ones in and around the center diamond) along with the three shot group from the picture above and the second three shot group I took subsequently (in the right circle). Pretty amazing performance, once I got the scope set up right it was printing three shot groups of .5 moa or less.



















To say I am pleased is a dramatic understatement. I actually was pissed off at first, as I was getting the scope set up, as I thought the rifle was shooting all over the place. The first shot I took was off the shoot n see part of the target and the second shot seemed to be off the target entirely. Only when I went to the target in the change period did I see that the second shot was in the same hole as the first shot.

Jeezuz kee-rist, GAP rifles are amazing.


Speaking of which, as I was driving back home from the range I saw these two bulls in a field and one of them was popping wood. In honor of Affe, I stopped the truck and snapped a picture. If you click on the picture you may be able to see the bullcock on the one at the right of the picture.

The Media Betray Us

It's been quite some time since I ripped on the NY Times. In part, this is due to the fact that I canceled my subscription and thus am not given reason to be outraged on a daily basis.

In any event, I just saw the piece, below, come through on the AP wire and thought how interesting it is that the story, even though it tries hard to avoid crediting President Bush's "surge" strategy, provides a general tone of "holy shit, things in Iraq have really improved!" For example, look at this line:

The claim could not be independently verified, but, if true, it would represent a dramatic end to the sectarian cleansing that has shredded the fabric of Baghdad's once mixed society.

It made me think back to when the surge started. What was it the NY Times editorialized in response to the surge? Hmmm. Let's check. Here are a few of the Times' editorials since the surge started:

September 5, 2007
Editorial
Another Iraq Photo Op
Iraq is a long way to go for a photo op, but not for President Bush, who is pulling out all the stops to divert public attention from his failed Iraq policies and to keep Congress from demanding that he bring the troops home. As Americans and Iraqis continue to die — and Iraqi politicians refuse to reconcile — Mr. Bush stubbornly refuses to recognize that what both countries need is a responsible exit strategy for the United States, not more photo ops and disingenuous claims of success.

With Congress launching a series of pivotal hearings this week, Mr. Bush’s eight-hour stopover in Iraq on Sunday won him major play in the news media, including photos of smiling American military forces with their commander in chief. But the facts of the visit undermined his claims that his troop escalation is working and deserves more time and more lives to bear fruit.

Mr. Bush’s only destination was an isolated, well-fortified air base in Anbar Province, not Baghdad where his so-called surge was supposed to bring stability and persuade Iraqi politicians that they had more to gain from reconciliation than score-settling. We suppose Mr. Bush could claim one success for his visit: he did manage to get Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to visit the Sunni-dominated province.

Mr. Bush pumped up his headlines by suggesting continued gains in security could allow for a reduction in troops as his critics have been demanding and most Americans desperately want. But this is a cruel tease and a pathetic attempt to repackage old promises. Mr. Bush has been dangling that same as-soon-as-possible drawdown for years. The Pentagon had a plan to do just that in 2004. Today, the troop level stands at 160,000, up 30,000 from the start of this year.

Despite all Mr. Bush’s cheerleading, a new report by nonpartisan Congressional investigators tells a much grimmer and closer to reality tale, concluding that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 11 of 18 military and political benchmarks to which it had agreed.

The report by the Government Accountability Office said that Iraq’s government has failed to eliminate militia control of local security forces, failed to increase the number of army units capable of operating independently, failed to enact long-promised legislation essential for political reconciliation and even raised doubts whether the government is capable of spending $10 billion in reconstruction funds.

And that was the buffed-up version. An earlier draft of the G.A.O. report had the Iraqis failing on 15 of the 18 goals, until the Pentagon protested that the grading was too harsh.

Mr. Bush clearly has no strategy to end this conflict, which has no end in sight. The American people deserve considered judgments not come-ons from their leaders. Congress needs to insist on a prudent formula that will withdraw American forces and limit the hemorrhaging.

September 11, 2007
Editorial
Empty Calories
For months, President Bush has been promising an honest accounting of the situation in Iraq, a fresh look at the war strategy and a new plan for how to extricate the United States from the death spiral of the Iraqi civil war. The nation got none of that yesterday from the Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It got more excuses for delaying serious decisions for many more months, keeping the war going into 2008 and probably well beyond.

It was just another of the broken promises and false claims of success that we’ve heard from Mr. Bush for years, from shock and awe, to bouquets of roses, to mission accomplished and, most recently, to a major escalation that was supposed to buy Iraqi leaders time to unify their nation. We hope Congress is not fooled by the silver stars, charts and rhetoric of yesterday’s hearing. Even if the so-called surge has created breathing room, Iraq’s sectarian leaders show neither the ability nor the intent to take advantage of it.

The headline out of General Petraeus’s testimony was a prediction that the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to 130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would bring American troops only to the level of troops that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity. The military does not have the troops to sustain these high levels without further weakening the overstretched Army and denying soldiers their 15 months of home leave before going back to war.

The general claimed a significant and steady decline in killings and deaths in the past three months, but even he admitted that the number of attacks is still too high. Recent independent studies are much more skeptical about the decrease in violence. The main success General Petraeus cited was in the previously all-but-lost Anbar Province where local sheiks, having decided that they hate Al Qaeda more than they hate the United States, have joined forces with American troops to combat insurgents. That development — which may be ephemeral — was not a goal of the surge and surprised American officials. To claim it as a success of the troop buildup is, to be generous, disingenuous.

The chief objective of the surge was to reduce violence enough that political leaders in Iraq could learn to work together, build a viable government and make decisions to improve Iraqi society, including sharing oil resources. Congress set benchmarks that Mr. Bush accepted. But after independent investigators last week said that Baghdad had failed to meet most of those markers, Mr. Crocker dismissed them. The biggest achievement he had to trumpet was a communiqué in which Iraqi leaders promised to talk more.

General Petraeus admitted success in Iraq would be neither quick nor easy. Mr. Crocker claimed that success is attainable, but made no guarantee. With that much wiggle room in the prognosis, one would think American leaders would start looking at serious alternative strategies — like the early, prudent withdrawal of troops that we favor. The American people deserve more than what the general and the diplomat offered them yesterday.

For that matter, they deserve more than what was offered by Representative Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. When protesters interrupted the hearing, Mr. Skelton ordered them removed from the room, which is understandable. But then he said that they would be prosecuted. That seemed like an unnecessarily authoritarian response to people who just wanted to be heard.

September 14, 2007
Editorial
No Exit, No Strategy
This was the week in which Americans hoped they would get straight talk and clear thinking on Iraq. What they got was two exhausting days of Congressional testimony by the American military commander, hours of news conferences and interviews, clouds of cut-to-order statistics and a speech from the Oval Office — and none of it either straight or clear.

The White House insisted that President Bush had consulted intensively with his generals and adapted to changing circumstances. But no amount of smoke could obscure the truth: Mr. Bush has no strategy to end his disastrous war and no strategy for containing the chaos he unleashed.

Last night’s speech could have been given any day in the last four years — and was delivered a half-dozen times already. Despite Mr. Bush’s claim that he was offering a way for all Americans to “come together” on Iraq, he offered the same divisive policies — repackaged this time with the Orwellian slogan “return on success.”

Mr. Bush’s claim that things were going so well in Iraq that he could “accept” his generals’ recommendation for a “drawdown” of forces was a carnival barker’s come-on. The Army cannot sustain the 30,000 extra troops Mr. Bush sent to Iraq beyond mid-2008 without serious damage to its fighting ability. From the start, the president said that the increase would be temporary. That’s why he called it a “surge.”

Before he spoke, Iraq’s brutal reality had debunked the claims of political and military success made by Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the ambassador in Baghdad. First, The Times reported that the only sliver of political progress — a tortuous compromise on sharing oil revenues — was evaporating. Then came news of the assassination of the Anbar tribal leader whose decision to fight alongside the Americans was cited by Mr. Bush as proof that the war’s tide was turning — even though it had nothing to do with the increase in forces.

Mr. Bush’s claims last night about how well the war is going are believable only if you use Pentagon numbers so obviously cooked that they call to mind the way Americans were duped into first supporting this war.

There will be a lot said in coming days about Mr. Bush’s “new strategy,” just as there was after each of his previous major addresses on the war. If there was a new strategy, it would be easy to recognize. Mr. Bush would drop the meaningless talk of victory and stop trying to sell Americans the fiction that the war keeps them safe from terrorism. (To his credit, General Petraeus declined to adopt that bit of propaganda.) Instead, Mr. Bush would do what the vast majority of Americans want — plan an orderly withdrawal while doing what he can to mitigate the consequences of the war.

Mr. Bush was right when he said last night that the aftermath of withdrawal would be bloody and frightening, but that is a product of his invasion and his gross mismanagement of the a