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A Satirist Is Born

This is a hilarious piece from Kimberly Strassel on Obama's Magic. What a hoot.

When is a Tax Cut Not a Tax Cut?

We noted previously that Obama is counting his tax increases as "spending cuts," but wait, there's more. He's also calling his spending increases "tax cuts." Somewhere around 40% of the populace is already paying no income taxes, so we were confused as to how 95% of people could get a tax cut. Used to be you actually had to pay taxes before they could be reduced, but no more. As the Wall Street Journal explains, Obama is proposing seven new "tax credits:"

Obama's 95% Illusion - WSJ.com: "Here's the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be 'refundable,' which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer -- a federal check -- from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this 'welfare,' or in George McGovern's 1972 campaign a 'Demogrant.' Mr. Obama's genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable 'tax credits' would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as 'tax credits,' the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is."

So much for ending welfare as we know it. It's all about "spreading the wealth around." As he tells the plumber in the video, Obama doesn't want to punish his success. If he had, Obama would probably have given the guy a baby. Here's a tip: Just say, "Keep the change, Barack."

The Angry Right

Suddenly, the dinosaur media have discovered that some people at McCain-Palin rallies are angry. It seems some people there actually even dislike Barack "The One" Obama, if you can imagine. The impertinence! He has been annointed. Didn't those wingnuts get the message?

These reports of a few inappropriate catcalls from a crowd of thousands may be true, although we can't rule out plants from the Left attempting to discredit McCain-Palin supporters or plain media fabrications. Perhaps now that the MSM have discovered this angry speck in the eye of the Right, they might take a little notice of the log of seething rage that has been the public face of the Left for the past 8 years. Michelle Malkin has a good review of some of the fruits of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), Palin Madness Syndrome (PMS), and McCain Hatred. Then there is this video of the wonderful, tolerant liberals of New York's Upper West Side, and Jim Treacher proves again that it's impossible to parody these guys. When we start to see MSM stories about the eyeball popping rage on the left, I'll start to take their opinions on the subject more seriously.

Which is not to say conservatives, even libertarian conservatives like myself, aren't angry. I am angry, although I'm not about to assault anyone. I'm angry about several things.

The MSM have become an arm of the Obama campaign, abandoning any pretense of objectivity. Could they bother to look into Obama's past at all? How about spending just 1/100th of the resources they spent trying to smear Sarah Palin looking into Obama's buddies: Rezko; Wright; Pfleger; and Ayers. How about equal billing for the true story of Obama's ties to the socialist New Party along with the false story of Palin and the Alaskan Independence Party? How about looking into his record in Illinois, at Harvard and at Columbia beyond what he says in his autobiographies?

Obama has been able to run his campaign as a complete cypher. He's a political chameleon, running to the left of Hillary and to the right of McCain in the same election. In the primary he was planning to gut the defense budget, including missile defense, but in the first debate with McCain, suddenly missile defense is essential to him. He's actually claiming that he'll prosecute the war in Afghanistan more agressively than McCain. Who really believes that? Not his Nutroots supporters, who know that's just a put on to fool the rest of us. If any previous statements become inconvenient, he just denies he ever made them, and the press plays along. He's a bullshitter, constantly puffing up his resume with exaggerated or phony claims.

While posing as a "post-partisan," "post-racial" candidate, Obama has managed to run one of the most visciously partisan and openly race-baiting campaigns in history. McCain runs an ad comparing Obama to celebrity airheads, and gets attacked for "racism." McCain points out the links between Obama and former Fannie Mae CEOs, one white one black, who made millions while ruining the financial system, and those ads are "racist." Palin notes the Ayers connection, and that's, take a guess, "racist." Is it possible there exists some way to criticize Obama's record, words or deeds that is not racist? Perhaps a McCain ad that agreed that we need Hope and Change, but claimed we should Do More would pass muster. Nope, racist.

Joe Biden is a walking gaffe machine, but for some reason that doesn't matter at all. In the debate with Palin he made some ridiculous statements about "when we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon." Had Palin said that, the election would have been over at that moment. Even accepting the "official" explanation that he meant to say Syria, it still made no sense at all. Recently, he claimed that Franklin Roosevelt went on TV after the 1929 Crash to talk to America. This was odd, since Roosevelt was not yet president and TV had not been invented. Right after 9/11, Biden had this brainstorm:

At the Tuesday-morning meeting with committee staffers, Biden launches into a stream-of-consciousness monologue about what his committee should be doing, before he finally admits the obvious: "I'm groping here." Then he hits on an idea: America needs to show the Arab world that we're not bent on its destruction. "Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran," Biden declares. He surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face.

He's there as the foreign policy heavyweight to add "gravitas" to the ticket. We can all feel so much better about an Obama presidency, knowing that Biden will be guiding him in key decisions. Yet the MSM perpetuate the myth of Biden's foreign policy expertise.

Update: Added the forgotten link above to Biden's suggestion to send a $200 million jizya to Iran to encourage future bombings.