Wall Street JournalObama Talks Nonsense on Tax Cuts

Now we know: 95% of Americans will get a "tax cut" under Barack Obama after all. Those on the receiving end of a check will include the estimated 44% of Americans who will owe no federal income taxes under his plan.

National Review: Obama's New Tax Welfare. Behind the 95

Barack Obama says he plans to cut taxes for 95 percent of American workers. That sounds terrific, but there are three problems. One, it is meant to draw attention from the real core of the Obama tax plan: proposed increases in every major federal tax. Two, the structure of the cuts will create perverse incentives. And three, many of the people receiving “tax cuts” don’t pay taxes to begin with, meaning they’ll be in effect getting welfare.

YouTube: Barney Frank: Plenty of Rich People that We Can Tax

National Review: Barney Frank, Doing His Best For the RNC

NB: The Liberal Media's Tax Bias: All About Spreading the Wealth, Not Expanding the Pie

In other words, McCain would have been accurate if he’d said “gives an income tax cut to those who don’t pay income taxes — and pays for it by raising income taxes on those who are already shouldering more than half of the nation’s income tax burden.”

National Review: Fair Taxation?

God bless him. Joe the plumber, that is, for coaxing from Sen. Obama his true motive for raising taxes. It isn't to fund the government, or deal with the deficit, or to establish a rainy day fund. It's to “spread the wealth around,” which the Illinois senator insists is “good for everyone.”

Sen. Obama calls this a “tax fairness plan,” but what is fair?

Wall Street Journal: A Liberal Supermajority

If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.

American Thinker: Obama's Campaign Built on Lies

But two lies in particular have been especially consequential: Obama's pledge not to run for President in 2008, and his commitment to participate in federal financing for his general election campaign, with its consequent spending limits. The news this past Sunday that Obama raised $150 million for his campaign in September shows the significance of the second lie.

"Barney Frank said, '[T]he fundamentals of the economy are better than the psychology,' meaning the economy is in far better shape than you people have been led to believe. When McCain said this, the Obama campaign reamed him!"

After guaranteeing that Obama's weakness and inexperience will draw us into a crisis with our enemies, Joe Biden goes into hiding. Meanwhile, Albright and other Obama campaign flacks struggle to contain the damage.

Will Obama's weakness invite Russia to spark a Venezuelan missile crisis as JFK's weakness invited the USSR to spark the Cuban missile crisis? It could happen, folks.

Obama admits in his book that he did cocaine. Where did he buy his drugs? Did he ever sell drugs? The media won't ask these questions, but they'll investigate a private citizen, Joe the Plumber! The poor guy can't get work, anymore. This is what you get for daring to ask The Messiah a question.

Palin: If I had said what Biden said, the media would have destroyed me

Video: CNN egregiously distorts National Review quote to humiliate Palin

The comprehensive argument against Barack Obama

What follows is by no means comprehensive, but it does shed some much-needed light on a number of Obama’s positions, statements, and associations about which he has been less than honest. We’ve attempted to boil each issue down to a succinct explanation with an accompanying, brief video clip—often starring Barack Obama in his own words. Before pulling the lever for someone who hopes voters will ignore his paper-thin resume, unsavory associations, and hard-left voting record, each citizen has a duty to do his due diligence.

In short, we hope this “closing argument” is compelling and clear, and we encourage you to share this essay with undecided or wavering family members, friends, and co-workers.

SUMMATION

All three of us have written many, many times on all of these issues. Taken individually, most of them would create doubt about the readiness and honesty of any political candidate. Put together as a narrative, we believe this paints the picture of a man who has few real credentials for the office he seeks beyond the Constitutional minimum, and a politician who has succeeded in obfuscating his hard-Left ideology.

Perhaps if Barack Obama had taken more time to build his resumé – especially with executive experience – he might have made a more compelling candidate, and might have demonstrated at least a little of the moderation he has claimed. Instead, Democrats want America to support at once the most radical and least qualified candidate for President in at least a century. They have tried to conceal this with the complicity of a pom-pom-waving national media that has shown much more interest in the political background of a plumber from Ohio than in a major-party candidate for President.

America deserves better than that. Voters deserve the truth from the press, not vague cheers of “hope” and “change” while willfully ignoring or air-brushing Obama’s record. We hope to set that record straight with our essay.

Colin Powell's Obama endorsement was totally about race. Powell -- who made the case at the UN for Saddam's WMD -- owes his career to Republican presidents, but he's a pro-affirmative action, pro-abortion liberal.

Video: If Palin said what Biden said, it’d be front-page news, notes … Dan Rather?

Via Breitbart. Note to the media: When even this guy thinks you’re in the tank, it’s time to regroup.

NYT: Dodd should release mortgage papers now

The New York Times sets its sights on an unfamiliar target — a liberal Democrat.  Chris Dodd has still not released his mortgage records to the public to show how much money his “Friends of Angelo” loans saved him on two different properties financed by Countrywide, despite his promises to do so.  The Times’ editorial board wonders what excuses Dodd will offer next:

After reports emerged in June about him having received favorable treatment on two home mortgages from the Countrywide Financial Corporation, Senator Christopher Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, promised that he would release documents to support his contention that he never benefited financially from the terms of the loans.

The senator has failed to keep his promise, and his excuses are wearing ridiculously thin. …

The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating whether the terms of the loans violated its rules on disclosing gifts. But such an investigation does not preclude Mr. Dodd from being candid.

Mr. Dodd admits he was extended “courtesies” by Countrywide. It’s time for him to extend some courtesy to his constituents and the rest of the nation and release the records on the mortgages, without delay.

An honorable man would have released the records immediately after the cozy relationship got uncovered.  On the other hand, an honorable man would never have put himself in that position in the first place.  Accepting gift mortgage rates under a VIP plan from a company Dodd helped regulate is such an obvious conflict of interest that it should result in criminal prosecution, not an Ethics Committee ruling.

Even the Times wants to know what Dodd’s hiding about Countrywide

I have a question I wish anyone that reads this blog can give a good answer to.

Congress [Democrat controlled] has lower approval numbers then the President [the ones I've seen] so why are the Democrats [again who control Congress] set to continue control and possibly expand their numbers in the House and Senate?

McCain: The two faces of Barack Obama

John McCain continues to improve his message while campaigning through swing states. In Pennsylvania today, McCain used Barack Obama’s support for both the Phillies and the Devil Rays as a revealing moment about Barack Obama the politician.  He will say and do anything to get elected, but afterwards …. well

McCain didn’t let up on the lessons of Joe the Plumber, either:

After months of campaign trail eloquence, we’ve finally learned what Senator Obama’s economic goal is. As he told Joe, he wants to quote “spread the wealth around.” He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans. Senator Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie. This explains some big problems with my opponent’s claim that he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero?

Well, that’s the key to Barack Obama’s whole plan: Since you can’t reduce income taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will have to cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe.

That may be the best stump-speech explanation I’ve heard yet from McCain about Obamanomics.  How do you reduce zero?  You start another branch of welfare, and you rob capital from sources that could otherwise create jobs to do it.  That won’t grow the economy, but it will expand the dependent class who will then vote to protect the patronage they receive.  That’s another version of the Chicago Way.

Video: Albright on Biden

The Barack Obama campaign sidelined Joe Biden today and opted to get one of their diplomats out in front of the Crisis Gaffe. Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State and one of Obama’s 300 foreign-policy advisers, tried to shrug off Biden’s comments as just a “statement of fact” — which may not be terribly helpful

ROBERTS: I want to ask you what you thought of what Joe Biden said yesterday, in terms of this idea that Senator Obama, if he becomes President, would be tested by an international crisis within the first six months. John McCain certainly picked up on that. Let’s listen to what he said yesterday.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: If Senator Obama is elected, Senator Biden said ‘we will have an international crisis that tests America’s new president.’ We don’t want a President who invites testing from the world at time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars.

ROBERTS: No question there what Senator McCain thought about those comments. What did you think about what Senator Biden said?

ALBRIGHT: Well, I think it’s just a statement of fact, frankly, and in my book, I talk about the fact that there are a lot of big issues out there, but that also something unexpected – you always have to be prepared for that.

I understand what Albright means in her argument — that any change of administration would tempt America’s enemies to test the new President to see how far they can go. However, Biden’s comments went much further than that. He pointed to the inexperience of his running mate as a special incentive for creating a crisis, and that his response would probably look unsatisfactory:

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. “And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

Even Albright would have to admit that a known quantity in the White House would provide less of a temptation to start provoking the US to test our responses. And Albright would know better than to telegraph the responses by saying we would do something unpopular, rather than act with strength to end the provocations. Why not just reassure people that Obama won’t let rogue nations push us around like playground bullies? Apparently, that’s not the response that Obama has in mind when challenged by the likes of Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, or Cuba.

Why has Biden taken a day off the trail?

According to campaign sources, Joe Biden has no events planned for today — despite the election being only two weeks away.  What happened?  Could Team Obama have pulled Slow Joe off the trail after telling people that Barack Obama’s election would provoke our enemies into a confrontation with us, and maybe more than one?

I’m not sure why this will surprise anyone.  I’ve said for months that Obama would serve the second term of the Jimmy Carter administration on both economics and foreign policy.  Carter’s inaction on Afghanistan and Iran certainly worked out well for us, didn’t it?  Both gave rise to Islamic fundamentalism, and eventually forced us to go to war to fight it at great cost and difficulty.

Team Obama need not worry about Biden’s gaffes.  The media has all but buried the relevant portions of Biden’s offering.  Consider this report from MS-NBC’s Andrea Mitchell yesterday, from John Ziegler:

ANDREA MITCHELL: …Sunday McCain’s long-time friend Colin Powell endorsed Obama and criticized the choice of Sarah Palin.

COLIN POWELL, ON MEET THE PRESS: I don’t believe she’s ready to be President of the United States, which is the job of the Vice President.MITCHELL: Powell could boost Obama’s foreign policy credentials. But today the McCain camp seized on something Joe Biden said, that Oama would be tested in his first months in office.

AUDIO OF JOE BIDEN: They’re going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy. They’re going to want to test him. And they’re going to find out this guy’s got steel in his spine.

JOHN McCAIN: We don’t want a President who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis.

MITCHELL: Meanwhile, McCain’s running mate, fighting the image war, confronted her double on Saturday Night Live…

That leaves out quite a bit from the clip:

It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking…. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy….

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.

In fact, the media used a portion of a different speech rather than repeat the actual Biden gaffe.  So, perhaps, Team O can remove the gag from Biden and allow him back out onto the campaign trail.  With the help of the Tanning Bed Media, Team O has nothing to fear from its running mate.

Video: Barney Frank wants more taxes

Suddenly, with Barack Obama pitching almost a trillion dollars in new spending, leading Democrats see nothing wrong with deficit spending. Why? Because the rich will pay for it, silly! Barney Frank explains that spending tons of money we don’t have now will be no problem, because he knows where to get it:

I think at this point, there needs to be an immediate increase in spending, and I think this is a time when deficit fear has to take a second, uh, a second seat. I do think this is the time for a very important kind of dose of [unintelligible]. Yes, I think later on, there should be tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of rich people out there who we can tax at a point down the road to recover some of this money.

Frank has a large amount of chutzpah to talk about recovering money.  Frank and his cohorts in Congress ensured that we lost the money by blocking regulators from doing their jobs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Frank himself kept telling us from 2001 to this year that Fannie and Freddie were solvent and that there wouldn’t be a collapse — and so we didn’t need to toughen oversight over their business practices.

As Obama makes political hay off protectionism and promises a new Smoot-Hawley era, it's no surprise our trading partners are beginning to look to other markets — such as Europe. It's a warning.

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Our No. 1 trading partner, Canada, isn't stupid. When Obama threatened last February to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement on his own terms, our northern ally started looking abroad to other markets.

They found a big one in Europe, which seems to have few hang-ups about increasing exports and signing free-trade treaties. Last Friday, Canada and the European Union held the first talks toward an eventual free trade agreement between the two.

U.S. allies are wise to seek other partners no matter what the U.S. climate — the U.S. downturn no doubt plays a role too. But it started with noises out of the U.S. about pulling up the drawbridge.

With a global downturn, free trade makes more sense than ever. That ought to be an election issue for the U.S., which needs to stay globally competitive. Sadly, it's not.

Agree or disagree, there's no doubt that protectionism will make America poorer and less influential, protecting nothing. Outsourcing is particularly full of misperceptions.

"Look at the auto industry — Japan started by exporting to Canada and the U.S., and now produces cars in the U.S. They did it because the market itself is in the U.S. We see exactly the same thing in Europe. More car plants are going up in Germany and France than Bulgaria and Romania, even though the labor costs are lower there."

With the possibility of a protectionist Democratic president (Barack Obama) working with a protectionist Democratic Congress, the U.S. may be the odd man out when it comes to free trade.

Pity. Because free trade, as any economist will tell you, inevitably boosts the economies of those who engage in it. So others, like Canada, Colombia and Europe, will continue down the free-trade path — toward greater wealth for their citizens — while the U.S. sits on the sidelines.

Seven months. That's all it took before Hawaii concluded that the only state universal child medical coverage program in the country is unsustainable. Give officials credit for heading off a disaster.

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On March 1, the Hawaii Medical Service Association began enrolling children in the state Keiki (child) Care program. The grand plan was to provide medicine for every child between birth and 18 years old who didn't otherwise have coverage.

But then parents who could afford coverage began dropping their private plans and placing their children in the program. Gov. Linda Lingle's office, seeing a sure disaster ahead, pulled the plug on the patient last week, citing "budget shortfalls." There simply isn't enough money in the state treasury to fund it.

As socialist health care programs go, Keiki Care was small scale. Officials designed it to accommodate about 3,500 children. It never got that big. By the time just 2,000 children had enrolled, it had become obvious that it was not going to work.

Yet allegedly credible politicians and empty-headed dreamers want to forcibly socialize health care for the entire U.S. and provide coverage for 300 million Americans.

They tell us repeatedly that such a system will actually lower medical costs. Of course it will — but only if health care is rationed, less high-tech care and advanced drugs are used, and people lose the right to choose their own doctor.

Every government that has experimented with such universal health care plans has experienced similar ailments. Britain? Long wait times and shabby care. Canada? The same. Sweden? Its problems are, not so remarkably, similar to those in Britain and Canada.

Severe problems begin when large numbers in universal-care nations begin to help themselves to the "free" health care provided by the government. Since they believe someone else is paying, they run to the doctor for conditions they would not otherwise spend their own money on. That leads to system overuse, the symptoms of which are long wait times, overworked doctors, substandard care and soaring costs that must be borne by taxpayers.