Oct 10 2008

Obama’s tax cut: what he doesn’t mention

Category: economy,election 2008,Obama,taxes — harmonicminer @ 9:28 pm

So:  in ALL of Obama’s discussion of his plans to raise taxes on only the top 5% in income, and “cut” taxes for the other 95%, how much have you heard about his plans to allow the expiration of the Bush tax cuts?

Does he mention those tax cuts were across the board, so that EVERYONE who paid taxes got a tax cut?

From where I sit, letting a tax cut expire is about the same thing as raising taxes.

By the way, does Obama ever mention that, historically, when taxes are CUT, including on the investors, entrepreneurs and employers (i.e., that top 5%), revenues to the US Treasury actually go UP (allowing more entitlement spending, if you’re so inclined…  sigh)?  Does he ever explain why he wants to RAISE taxes on the highest tax payers, when that behavior is virtually certain to LOWER revenues to the Treasury, thus limiting the ability of the government to provide the services socialists demand?  Does he admit that raising taxes on the economically active top 5% will affect their economic activity, causing them to take fewer risks, invest in less business activity (all of which creates jobs), move more of their economic activity to other countries, etc.?   Can Obama point to any instance in human history where a tax raise CAUSED people to be more economically active, and therefore created economic growth?   (Don’t confuse correlation with causation when you start looking for examples of this, if you’re so inclined.)

Has he explained why it’s better for the “working class” to get a tax cut (or just an outright check for $1000 or so from the government for the 40% who pay no income tax) than it is for the same people to have a secure job in a growing economy?  And the great probability that his tax raise on the top 5% will SLOW or STOP growth altogether, especially in the current economic situation?  That his tax raise on the employer class is going to cause fewer jobs, because the money that would have supported more workers will go to the government, or employers will simply manage their situation to reduce activity in the USA, and thus reduce tax liability?

Has Obama ever explained why HIS socialist leaning plans will work in the USA, when they’ve essentially failed in other nations, and are being replaced by more privatization?

Has he ever mentioned that the tax on US business is among the very highest in the world, already?  Has he ever mentioned the fact that when taxes are raised on business, they either cut jobs, or raise prices, or both?

Well….  probably not.

Tags: , ,

Oct 09 2008

The Chicago Democrats’ dirty little non-secret

Category: corruption,election 2008,Obama,politics,socialism,USA — harmonicminer @ 9:13 am

Obama’s political and professional alliance with Bill Ayers, unrepentant terrorist, has not gotten nearly the coverage it deserves in the media.   In what little coverage there is, the story seems to stop at the discusssion of whether Obama knew Ayers well, whether, or when, Obama knew that Ayers was a terrorist, how close the alliance between them was, etc.  These are all important questions, and Obama has given different answers at different times, all evasive.

What’s missing in the discussion is the simple fact that Ayers’ past was well known to the entire Chicago Democrat political machine. Ayers had been given the Citizen of the Year Award by the city of Chicago (read, Mayor Daley) in 1997.  Everyone in the Chicago political machine (in which Obama was a card carrying member) knew all about Ayers.  If Obama didn’t (unbelievable, but just for the sake of argument), everyone around him DID know, and thought it not important enough to mention to Obama.  It reveals all we need to know about the nature of the Chicago political machine, and about what members of that machine thought would matter to Obama.  But, of course, he knew all about it.  It’s just funny that his campaign thinks that claiming he didn’t lets him off the hook.

This tells us a few things.

The CULTURE of Chicago Democrat machine politics is radical to its core.  Can you imagine, say, Tulsa, Oklahoma giving a Citizen of the Year Award to an unrepentant terrorist who said, “We didn’t do enough.”?  (After all, Ayers only tried to blow up government buildings in other cities…  it would be different if he’d tried to blow up something in Chicago.)  This tells us that Obama is a favorite son of, honestly, a pretty sick political machine.

Obama made his political bones IN that culture, by being a good member of it, agreeing with its principles and procedures, etc.  Obama had no problems with it, never fought it, was never a “maverick” or a “unifier” across party lines, etc.  He was always, first and foremost, a party man, in a city where that party was seriously bent and famously corrupt.

A President Obama is all too likely, especially with a Democrat Senate doing the approvals, to appoint radical, radical people in important jobs.  It would be bad enough for him to recycle political hacks from the Clinton or Carter administrations.  But there is every chance that he will appoint a Secretary of Defense whose main impulse is to build DOWN the military, saddle it with impossible rules of engagement, use it as a further testing ground for all kinds of social engineering, etc., with military effectiveness being the last consideration.  His Secretary of State will have the happy job of giving away the store.  His Secretary of the Treasury (not likely to be Warren Buffet, despite the last debate), will probably help guarantee there is little store to give away.  I don’t even want to think what his other appointments would be like, but former ACORN membership is probably the least of our problems.

And given his union commitments, and his obvious willingness to play political hardball, there is no chance that he and a Democrat Congress won’t enact a “fairness doctrine” that will attempt to cripple Right leaning talk radio, and an end to secret union balloting, that will allow unions to pressure individuals to vote the union’s way.

Make no mistake.  This isn’t just a little gerrymandering to jigger the voting districts favorably.  The Left plans to permanently alter the face of American politics by creating such structural imbalances in the system that the center-Right can never catch up.  If they can make enough people dependent on government for their daily bread, and silence the rest, the game is over, and the American experiment in constitutional republican democracy will be finished, even if it continues in name.

And it will have come out of Chicago’s political machine, where more murders were committed in the last 6 months than the death rate of American soldiers in Baghdad in the same timeframe.  I’m sure they’ll do a wonderful job of running the nation.

Tags: , ,

Oct 08 2008

Obama the radical socialist. Literally true, it seems.

Category: election 2008,Obama,politics,socialism — harmonicminer @ 10:16 pm

Many of us have commented that many of Obama’s policies and plans are essentially socialist, whether his campaign likes the term or not. However, I didn’t know that Obama had literally been a member of a socialist political organization in the 1990s until I read this article at Power Line. Here’s a teaser, but you should really read the entire article at Powerline (which includes archived web pages showing Obama’s relationship to the socialist “New Party”), then return here for my doubtless brilliant comments.

In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago “New Party”. The ‘New Party’ was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards. …

After allegations surfaced in early summer over the ‘New Party’s’ endorsement of Obama, the Obama campaign along with the remnants of the New Party and Democratic Socialists of America claimed that Obama was never a member of either organization. The DSA and ‘New Party’ then systematically attempted to cover up any ties between Obama and the Socialist Organizations. However, it now appears that Barack Obama was indeed a certified and acknowledged member of the DSA’s New Party.

On Tuesday, I discovered a web page that had been scrubbed from the New Party’s website. The web page which was published in October 1996, was an internet newsletter update on that years congressional races. Although the web page was deleted from the New Party’s website, the non-profit Internet Archive Organization had archived the page.

Powerline thinks it is inconceivable that the American people would elect a socialist President.

Sadly, I don’t.  That has been the trendline in the Democrat Party for decades, and we now have two radical Leftists leading the Senate and the House.  The energy in the Democrat Party has been on the Left for a long time, not anywhere near the “moderate center”.  The Democratic Leadership Council (nominally moderate, though its members all vote in lockstep with the Left) is moribund, energy-wise.  If Obama wins, it will be due to organizations like ACORN and the DailyKos/Soros crowd, combined with the racial politics of the NAACP and others.

It is no secret that Hamas essentially endorses Obama.  Shoot, the Communist Party USA endorses him.  The nominal opposite of the Communist Party USA (if you buy into the far left/far right dichotomy between Communists and Nazis), the Nazi Party, is no fan of McCain/Palin.  Check their site.  They don’t like anyone who supports Israel.  They call Palin a liar on their site.

The point?  This is not a case of the far Lefties endorsing the candidate closest to them on the political spectrum, with the same thing happening on the Right.  This is a matter of the far Left recognizing a more-or-less fellow traveler, while the Nazis know that McCain/Palin will be no friend of theirs, in any way, at any time.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the main stream media to pay any attention to this.  Expect the Obama campaign to cry “foul” and “personal attack!” and “politics of personal destruction!” and the like.  But imagine:  what if John McCain had been a member of, say, the KKK or the Nazi party or something similar in the 1990s?  What if he had even been ENDORSED by one of those groups, even if he wasn’t a member?  What if there was a webpage archive showing his relationship to such an organization?

You get the idea.  But the double standard is in full flower.

Tags: , , ,

Oct 07 2008

Quick Post-Debate Angry Thoughts

Category: election 2008,housing,McCain — amuzikman @ 9:40 pm

What a fool I’ve been – scrambling, scraping, working overtime, working extra jobs, doing without, and tightening the proverbial belt.  In my foolishness I’ve made some pretty difficult financial decisions that will help ensure I can honor all debts I have accrued, pay back every cent of money I have borrowed, and try to keep the promises I have made.

What I should have been doing was selling my home and buying a much bigger, more expensive one – with a mortgage I knew I would not be able to afford!  Because that way I could just sit back and let the federal government “bail” me out.  And now the latest “rescue” – McCain wants to spend 300 billion dollars (of TAXPAYER money) to have the government buy up so-called “bad” mortgages, lower the value of the homes, and then issue correspondingly new lower, more “manageable” mortgages that reflect the lower home value.  Brilliant, simply brilliant.  (Gee, that won’t have any market-effect on home values, will it…….) Meanwhile, like some kind of faux-Steinbeck character, I plod along hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel before I die and maybe getting a chance to “tend them rabbits”.

I think if I had any brains at all I’d just stop making my mortgage payments right now. But instead, I have created a short self-quiz in honor of the debate.

After listening to the Presidential debate tonight I must admit I feel like a complete:

a. idiot

b. sucker

c. schmuck

d. all of the above

…I think I’ll choose d.

P.S.  For those of you entranced with the rhetoric of “change you can believe in” – you should be careful what you wish for.  Because you may wake up some day after the election and realize you should have asked a few questions about what kind of change you were getting.

Tags: , , ,

Oct 07 2008

Welcome, neighbor!

Category: election 2008,judges,Obama,politics,terrorism — harmonicminer @ 6:28 pm

We’re letting people who hate us and who have been trained to kill us loose in our nation’s capitol. (much more at the link)

Immediately after it was released this summer, Barack Obama applauded the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5/4 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which for the first time extended rights under the U.S. Constitution to foreigners captured and held abroad based on their activities abroad. To reach that result, the Supreme Court had to declare unconstitutional a statute passed by Congress with bipartisan support and signed into law by the president which gave these individuals substantive and procedural rights comparable or superior to those we give to our own sons and daughters in uniform. It also had to ignore and/or mischaracterize decades of prior federal precedents holding that such foreigners had no right to claim the U.S. Constitution’s protections through a writ of habeas corpus, essentially extending the protections of the U.S. Constitution to the entire world.

Now as the inevitable consequence of that ruling, seventeen hard-core Islamic jihadists who’d come from their homes in China to train at terrorist camps in Afghanistan, captured there by our armed forces, and held since at Guantanamo Bay, are on the brink of being released this week, not for return to China, but into the general population of our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.:

Did you get that? We’re letting trained Chinese Islamic extremist trainee killers loose in Washington DC. This is the outcome that is praised by the Left, including Obama and acolytes. They wanted this.

So.

I propose that the government place these, uh, gentlemen in half-way houses in the same neighborhood as the Left leaning Supreme Court judges who made this idiotic decision. Or the neighborhood where the Democrat Senators live who invented Borking, or the Democrat Senators who filibustered the appointment of constructionist judges. Or, my personal favorite, the neighborhood where the ACLU lawyers live, who pushed for this ruling.

Actually, I suppose we can’t blame the Leftists on the Court for voting like “useful idiots“. But Justice Kennedy really ought to know better. So let’s just let the Chinese Islamic terrorist trainees loose in his neighborhood. Maybe that would be a nice place for the halfway house.

Tags: , ,

Oct 07 2008

Leeches are good for you. Really.

Category: economy,election 2008 — harmonicminer @ 9:00 am

Imagine if you took vitamins in moderation, ate a healthy diet, exercised regularly, and got enough rest.  Now, imagine you have gotten ill, due to exposure to something that has challenged your immune system, or some unexpected toxic exposure.

Imagine someone who told you that your good habits are what made you sick, that you’ve overdone all that health stuff, and you need to develop a few new vices and ease off the healthy lifestyle.  Imagine that person never mentioned the possibility of bacteria or virus as the cause of your illness, and when it was pointed out as the likely reason, simply denied that germs or toxic exposure have anything to do with being sick.

What would you think of the judgment of someone who gave you the following advice?

1)  You should stop eating a healthy diet.  Eat more fat, salt, sugar and alcohol.  And preservatives.  You need preservatives.

2)  You sleep too much.  Watch TV a couple extra hours each night, and still get up at the same time in the morning.  That’ll help.

3)  Forget the supplements.  Vitamins and minerals are overrated, and may be hurting you.  You should smoke or something.

4)  When you get well, for pity’s sake knock off the aerobic exercise and weight-lifting.  You’ll do yourself a mischief.

Is this making sense to you?  Or would you suspect that maybe your friend owned stock in a tobacco company, or had a Twinkie franchise?  Or maybe just hated you?

Continue reading “Leeches are good for you. Really.”

Tags: , ,

Oct 06 2008

Oblivious Obama? He just didn’t know?!?

Category: election 2008,media,Obama,politics,terrorism — harmonicminer @ 9:08 am

Now, Obama’s campaign is claiming he didn’t know that William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were terrorists, unrepentant ones, during all the years when Obama worked with Ayers, sent foundation money in Ayers’ direction, when Ayers’ helped Obama kick off his political career, etc.

Powerline has this to say about the likelihood that Obama “didn’t know”.

This strikes me as a rather stunning development. Obama appears to be admitting that if he knew about Ayers’ terrorist history, and the fact that he still takes pride in that history and despises America, it would be an error in judgment to form a close association with him.

But it is inconceivable that Barack Obama knew Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn well enough to kick off his first political campaign in their living room, but didn’t know that Ayers and Dohrn were Communists who led the Weatherman faction of SDS, urged young people to “kill your parents,” carried out approximately 30 bombings, including New York City’s police headquarters, the Capitol and the Pentagon, celebrated the Charles Manson murders, spent years living underground to avoid criminal prosecution, and continued to express their lifelong hatred for the United States in books, magazine articles, and public speeches. This is rather like a person claiming that he had worked closely with Arnold Schwarzenegger for years, but had no idea that he was once a bodybuilder and movie actor. Ayers’ and Dohrn’s radical past is their only claim to fame.

There must be a great many people who can attest that Obama was well aware of Ayers’ and Dohrn’s history. It will be interesting to see whether any of them are willing to blow the whistle on Obama’s latest evasion.

But there are also other problems with this incredible assertion:

1) The Ayers association has been a big topic among those opposing Obama for over a year. Why, exactly, is it only NOW that we’re being told Obama didn’t know? We’re supposed to think that the campaign just noticed, this week, that Obama’s relationship with Ayers is a problem? Why didn’t Obama say so when he was asked about this in the primary campaign debates with Hillary Clinton?

2)  Even if one accepted the impossible assumption of Obamian ignorance about Ayers’ past, what does this say about the KINDS of people with whom Obama works?  Ayers has NEVER hidden his past: indeed, he celebrates it, and specifically refers to it often as a badge of honor, verifying his pedigree as an authentic supporter of the radically LEFT causes he supports, and with which he and Obama were involved.  That means Obama’s ability to assess people is very weak, at a minimum, a charge strengthened by his pretended shock that Rev. Wright just surprised him with his hate-speech, after all those years of attending his church, being married by him, having his babies blessed by him, etc.

3)  When the Obama campaign (inevitably) retracts this silly assertion, will the campaign pay a price for lying desperately to try to blunt the charges about Obama’s terrorist connections?  Probably not, because the main stream media, snorkeling around in the tank for Obama, will simply not cover it, write editorials about the questions it raises, etc.

UPDATE:  One more thought:  even if we take a face value the argument that Obama didn’t know about Ayers’ terrorist past and unrepentant present, when Obama was working most closely with him on “education foundations”, Ayers was kicking off Obama’s political career in his home, etc., it is impossible to believe that those advising Obama at the time did not know, either.  Why wouldn’t they have told Obama?  Hard to think of a reason, unless it is that they knew Obama wouldn’t care.

Tags: , ,

Oct 04 2008

Obama, friend of terrorists… really, no kidding

Category: election 2008,McCain,media,Obama,politics,racism,terrorism — harmonicminer @ 7:16 pm

Continuing to demonstrate the inability to just give the news without editorializing, Yahoo news leads with this.

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin accused Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday of “palling around with terrorists,” in the latest sign the campaign is turning increasingly nasty.

Just a question: if Obama has actually “paled around with terrorists”, is it a sign the campaign is “turning increasingly nasty” to point that out?

Not until the sixth paragraph do we get anything about the nature of Obama’s relationship to the terrorist Bill Ayers: (the earlier ones are all devoted to he said/she said type reporting)

Palin cited a New York Times story on Saturday that examined Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Vietnam-era militant Weather Underground organization who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Times concluded they were not close.

Ah, the NYTimes, that bastion of Olympian fairness, has decided Obama is not “close” to Ayers, a self-admitted terrorist and bomber. Apparently, the NYTimes thinks you aren’t “close” to someone unless you share a toothbrush or something.

Just a question, for the reader: do YOU even know someone who knows someone who knows a terrorist?

I didn’t think so.  Here’s paragraph NINE of the story:

Obama served with Ayers on the board of a foundation in Chicago, and has said he was only eight-years-old when the Weather Underground committed its best-known bombing. He has also noted that former President Bill Clinton pardoned two members of the group during the last days of his presidency.

Clinton also pardoned some Puerto Rican terrorists and Marc Rich. This is a recommendation?

This is not simple “guilt by association”. It isn’t like they both went to Denny’s at the same time and happened to be placed at adjacent tables. Obama and Ayers served on boards together, were associates who worked together for “education initiatives” in Chicago, etc. Obama chose to continue his association with Ayers, and the first campaign kickoff for Obama was at Ayers’ house.

In the following video, Obama wants us to believe that Clinton is worse for having pardoned Weather Underground terrorists than Obama is for having associated with Ayers, one of the terrorists who WASN’T pardoned, but got off on a technicality because the FBI botched the investigation.  Ayers: “Guilty as sin and free as a bird.”

Try to understand this.  Even Obama admits knowing Ayers was a terrorist, an unrepentant one, and tries to pass off his relationship as “being on a board together”, and minimizes Ayers’ evil behavior as “something that happened 40 years ago”, as if evil done 40 years ago and not repented for is less evil, and his association with the perpetrator less suspect.  In fact, they worked closely on that board, and in other organizations, and Ayers was a prime supporter launching his political career.

The “40 years ago” approach is masking something that is revealed by changing a couple of details, in a sort of thought experiment.  What if Ayers had been a virulent racist, enthusiastic member of the KKK, burning crosses on lawns of black people, beating them when possible, encouraging lynchings, and the like?  What if he was now unrepentant about it, and said, “We didn’t do enough.”?  Would Obama pass it off as “something that happened 40 years ago” and essentially ignore it?

You know the answer, and so do I.  The only reason the “40 year ago” excuse works in his mind is because he doesn’t think having been a terrorist bomber and killer of police is all that bad.  So since it happened way back there somewhere, we can just sort of ignore it.

Except that we can’t.  And if you can….  well, I have some words for your judgment that I can’t really commit to print right now.

As for the quality of reporting in the article referenced above, it’s just more evidence that the media is morally blind, dumb and deaf, and totally in the tank for Obama.  Imagine if McCain had that racist friend just suggested in the “thought experiment” above.  Would the NYTimes conclude “they weren’t that close”?

Hah.

UPDATE:  To no one’s particular surprise, Stanley Kurz has done an excellent job covering this entire matter, and gives his analysis of the NYTimes “reporting” here.

UPDATE:  In the meantime, Tom Brokaw wants us to believe that unrepentant terrorist Ayers, who recently said, “We didn’t do enough,” is really just a “school reformer”.   Maybe Brokaw means that Ayers should be in “reform school for terrorists”, but somehow I doubt it.

Tags: , ,

Oct 03 2008

Change Through Orchestrated Crisis

Category: Congress,economy,election 2008,environment,healthcare,left,liberty,media,Obama,politics,socialism,university — harmonicminer @ 8:54 am

In a remarkable article in the American Thinker, James Simpson connects the dots between the various parts of the Left that have contributed to our current financial “crisis”.

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress – with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Continue reading “Change Through Orchestrated Crisis”

Tags: , , ,

Oct 01 2008

Imagine……. (dreamy, puffy clouds here)

Category: Biden,election 2008,media,Palin — harmonicminer @ 9:17 am

In an alternate universe, Mitt Romney is the Presidential candidate for the Republican party. His vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, will be debating Joe Biden exactly once. The moderator of the debate will be Hugh Hewitt, author of A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney.

The main stream media makes no objection to the selection of the moderator, knowing that Hugh Hewitt is a professional journalist who can put aside his own self-interest in selling books, and his own obvious political commitments, for the sake of journalistic objectivity in moderating the debate.

(suddenly jerking awake)

Man, that WAS a pipe dream. 

Tags: , , ,

« Previous Page — Next Page »