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And just what would a "generated crisis" be? Could it be as former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said Wednesday — that "leaders around the world see Obama as soft, untested and weak, and they will react accordingly?"

If so, Biden is right: Some aspiring latter-day Nikita Khrushchev, Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh will no doubt test our new commander in chief.

But there's another angle to this, based on what Biden the senator knows — that Obama's defense policies, once it's obvious how they'll undermine us, are likely to be very, very unpopular. In this case, Biden may be calling on his party's hard, pacifist core — Moveon.org, Code Pink and the like — to stand by their man.

"I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending," Obama told the pacifist Caucus for Priorities last year. "I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems."

Pretty sweeping. That means no more missile defense — although in recent tests in the Pacific and elsewhere, the system has shown itself to be a formidable potential shield against enemy attack.

But it didn't end there. "I will not develop nuclear weapons," he also promised Caucus for Priorities, vowing to seek "deep cuts" in our own arsenal, unilaterally disabling our nuclear deterrent as Russia and China engage in massive military buildups.

On the diplomatic front, Obama has pledged to talk to the likes of Iran's Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Chavez "without preconditions." But who knows what he'll give up once he sits down to talk?

Such policies will create a vacuum that our foes will be only too happy to exploit.

Small businesses create nearly 80% of the new jobs in the American economy, and Barack Obama is proposing that the bulk of their job-creating profits should be sent to Washington.

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Obama gets to his reassuring 98% figure by lumping firms with no employees, the majority of small businesses, with small businesses that have 50 or 100 employees. Census data show that 79% of all American companies, counting both large and small firms, have no employees.

Similarly, the SBA's Office of Advocacy reports that 52% of small businesses in the U.S. economy are home-based — that is, not exactly the heavy-hitters when it comes to job creation.

"Two-thirds of small business profits are earned in households making more than $250,000 per year," reports Americans for Tax Reform. "In 2006, $473 billion of the $706 billion of small business profits was earned in households Obama has said he would raise taxes on."

Obama's proposed increases in income taxes and Social Security taxes would shift the bulk of the profits in the small-business sector to the federal coffers, reports Americans for Tax Reform:

We have heard much in the press lately about the American taxpayer being forced to rescue the sharpies on Wall Street from their own greed and...

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Anti-bailout sentiment cuts "across class lines" on Main Street because "the taxpayers are on the hook for the bad judgment of others," as the Washington Post put it.

Now for a reality check.

Many Americans probably won't pay a cent of the cost of this bailout. That's because a rapidly increasing percentage of U.S. households legally pay no income taxes, and many others pay so little in taxes that they already get back more from the federal government in services than they send to Washington.

The number of taxpayers who generate a surplus for the federal government — that is, pay more in taxes than they receive in services — is small and shrinking, which is why the only way that the folks on Main Street will pay for this bailout will be if Main Street is where the mansions are in your town.

But since 1990, Washington has added all sorts of tax credits — subsidizing everything from "lifetime learning" to adoptions — that have further reduced the tax tab, and in the process raised the proportion of households with no federal tax liability to 33%.

Both presidential candidates would vastly accelerate the trend. Barack Obama's tax cut proposals, if enacted, would boost the proportion of those paying no income tax by one-third to a whopping 44% of all households, according to the Tax Foundation. John McCain's proposal is not much different. Under his plan, 43% of households would pay no federal income taxes.

But even among those who still pay an income tax, only a small percentage would likely be on the hook for the additional costs of the bailout.

By one estimate, the federal government already spends more than $20,000 per household in direct services or services that are considered part of the "general good" of the nation (like national defense).

In the end, how we actually pay for the bailout is just part of the issue. The larger point is that if McCain or Obama follow through with their tax plans, we'll continue a trend that makes us look more and more like some European social welfare state, where many people have a stake in growing government entitlements, which fewer and fewer taxpayers finance.

At some point along that road, change becomes impossible because too many citizens benefit from the system in place, while those who pay the freight for this system try whatever they can, including starting businesses elsewhere, or reducing their output, to avoid the disproportionate tax bite.

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The Constitution, it has been said, is a document written by geniuses to design a government that can be run by idiots. It defines and limits that government's powers and obligations, and lists rights designed to protect individuals from government excesses. It has been under assault from those who would change the Constitution from a document carved in stone into an Etch-a-Sketch.

Obama is one of those believers in a "living Constitution." Speaking in July 2007 at a Planned Parenthood conference in Washington, D.C., he said: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

"My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power," McCain has said, citing Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito as the type of justices he would appoint. Barack Obama was one of only 22 senators to oppose Roberts. McCain, by contrast, supported Ronald Reagan's failed nomination of Robert Bork.

NRA ad: “Imagine”

I wrote about this in June, and it’s on the level.  Rather than rewrite the same post, just click the link and get the background on Hale DeMar and Wilmette’s attempt to charge him with the crime of defending himself.  Where does Barack Obama come into the story?  He was on the wrong end of a lopsided 41-16 vote on a bill that didn’t even remove Wilmette’s gun ban, but only prevented prosecution in case of real self-defense.  This would have been a great example of bipartisanship — except Obama voted with the minority of the party to keep prosecuting people who had the temerity to defend themselves.

The vote on SB2165 and Obama’s continuing efforts to keep laws in place to prosecute victims demonstrate that Obama has tried hard to mislead voters on his hostility towards gun ownership.  He was in the minority of his own party on this issue.  That makes him an ideologue, not a post-partisan moderate.

How many will pay no federal income taxes in the next administration?

Under either John McCain or Barack Obama, millions of Americans will wind up paying no federal income taxes.  According to the Tax Foundation, tax liabilities will drop to zero (or less) for 15-16 million more Americans than now, pushing that to almost half of all filers.  While that may seem optimal to some, if it doesn’t come with significant reductions in overall revenue, it forces fewer people to pay for more government:

The tax code has always contained provisions that reduce the income tax burden for low-income workers, such as the standard deduction, personal exemption, and dependent exemption. Between 1950 and 1990, the percentage of tax filers whose entire tax liability was wiped out by these provisions averaged 21 percent. Since then, lawmakers have expanded credits—such as the earned income tax credit (EITC)—while creating a plethora of new credits, including the child tax credit, the HOPE credit, lifetime learning credit, and the credit for adoption expenses.

Most tax credits can only reduce a taxpayer’s amount due to zero, but the EITC and the child tax credit were also made refundable, meaning that taxpayers are eligible to receive a check even if they have paid no income tax during the year. Those tax returns have become, in effect, a claim form for a subsidy delivered through the tax system rather than a direct payment from a traditional government program like welfare or farm supports.

As shown in Table 1 below, the Tax Foundation estimates that there will be 47 million tax returns with zero income tax liability in 2009 under current law. That’s one-third of all tax returns, and those 47 million tax returns represent 96 million individuals.

Both the McCain and Obama plans would increase this number by expanding existing tax benefits or creating new ones. Senator McCain is proposing one expanded provision—the dependent exemption—and one new credit, a $5,000 refundable health care tax credit. The Obama plan contains seven new provisions, including a new “Making Work Pay Credit,” a “Universal Mortgage Credit,” and a plan to eliminate income taxes for seniors earning under $50,000.¹

Taken together, the Tax Foundation estimates the McCain proposals would increase the number of nonpayers by about 15 million, bringing the total number of taxpayers who pay no personal income taxes to 62 million, roughly 43 percent of all tax filers. Almost all of this is due to McCain’s health care credit, which dramatically realigns health care incentives and gives people a powerful motive to buy health insurance. This tax provision has a bigger impact on cutting people’s taxes than any single proposal from either party.

This seems very unhealthy in terms of commitment to federal government.  The government serves all Americans, and except for the poorest among us, we should all be contributing to its maintenance.  Without that kind of connection, the people who pay nothing will have no risk in demanding ever-increasing services and flat-out welfare, which is what Barack Obama’s tax plan really delivers in its seven refundables.  McCain doesn’t give away money to quite the same degree, but it has almost the same effect on taxpayers.

As the second chart demonstrates, the Bush tax cuts did not burden the poor.  It had a similar effect as what both Obama and McCain propose here.  Bush increased the number of people without any federal tax liability by 30%, from 25% to 33% overall.

Obama on education: Fund fringe ideas, neglect performance

Shocker: McCain gets worse media coverage than Obama

Maybe the shocker is that McClatchy reported it.  Pew Research says it’s not even close.  Only 14% of John McCain’s coverage has been positive, compared to a whopping 59% negative, since the debate.  What about Barack Obama?  Three guesses:

John McCain is getting more negative media coverage than Barack Obama, according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center.

The study, released Wednesday, examined 2,412 campaign stories from 48 news outlets during the six weeks from the end of the conventions through the final presidential debate.

The results: While the candidates are receiving equal amounts of coverage, 59% of stories about McCain were “decidedly negative in nature,” while only 14% were positive.

Obama hasn’t exactly been fawned over by media, but the coverage statistically has been more evenhanded, with 36% of stories clearly positive, 35% neutral or mixed, and 29% negative.

Put it another way: Obama gets treated positively 250% more often than John McCain, who gets treated negatively more than 200% more than Obama.  And that’s from equal amounts of coverage, which is in itself just a little surprising.  Just imagine what it would like if the coverage was imbalanced.

Pew has a few caveats about their study.  The negative coverage mainly comes from poll analysis, they say, and McCain’s been trending downward longer since the conventions than Obama.  That’s true as far as it goes, but I’m curious as to whether the polls drive that or the coverage drives the polling.  Also, the proliferation of polls gives media outlets their choice of narrative.  Maybe they focus on the worst of the polls more than the ones indicating more of a dead heat?  That could explain why some media outlets (I won’t name names like CBS, of course!) routinely conduct polls with ridiculously-skewed samples favoring Democrats by 14 points, just to drive that kind of negative coverage.

Obama: My idiot VP’s epic gaffe was a “rhetorical flourish”

Choice spin by The One, but in no way is it, shall we say, reality-based. Refresh your memory with Biden’s full quote; per the emphasis on Obama’s age, his point clearly was that enemies will try to take advantage of Obama’s inexperience to see what he’s made of. Say what you will about a former POW and 20-year veteran of the Senate known to sing, “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” but deciding whether to “test” him isn’t a matter to be undertaken lightly. Or are we now so far through the looking glass spin-wise that the guy who’ll meet with anyone without preconditions (even if they won’t meet with him) is the one to be feared while the war hero whom, the left periodically assures us, out-Bushes Bush for sheer bellicosity is the easy mark?

Exit question: What did Biden mean when he said to his lefty audience, “[T]he 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”? I assume that’s a veiled reference to The One possibly having to take military action somewhere, with all the screeching and shirt-rending on the left that it will entail, but opinions differed when this came up in Headlines earlier today.

Prepare for speech controls under an Obama presidency with absolute Democrat control of Congress: Sen. Bingaman (D-NM) hopes to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.

Joy Behar on The View: "Rush Limbaugh is a terrorist."

We've unearthed audio of Bill Ayers confessing to being an anarchist, and learned that Obama shared an office with this guy! Obama sought out these radicals in Chicago. He's window dressing for their views.

We're trying to drag McCain across the finish line, but win or lose we'll start rebuilding the conservative movement.

The MSM lies to Governor Palin in an effort to damage McCain.

NB: CNN's Drew Griffin Warps Quote From National Review in Palin Interview

Why deny it? This election is all about race. That's why it's "historic," right?

An Idiot at the Kansas City Star: Socialism is a Code Word for Black