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The Facts About Barack Obama's and John McCain's Tax Plans—No Socialism Here
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2008 Comment (164)I've caught a little grief from folks who aren't pleased with the way I explained the differences between the McCain and Obama tax plans yesterday.
Some of it is ideological, from partisans wearing their Limbaugh-Hannity blinders, who simply refuse to recognize that, under Obama's plan, the mythical Joe the Plumber, married with two kids, and earning $200,000 a year WOULD GET A $6,474 TAX CUT!
Which just happens to be the identical tax cut that McCain is offering to that same upper-middle-class family.
Now, where I come from, families earning $200,000 a year are still making a lot of money. They may be annoyed at the country club assessment, or stretched by the cost of prep school tuition, or upset with the price of gasoline and auto insurance for the cars they have given their teenage children, but they are far from hurting. Yet Obama still wants to cut their taxes—significantly.
That, my friends, is not socialism.
Other critics, more reasonably, have asked why I used broad tax categories—the middle 20 percent, the richest 1 percent—in yesterday's post, since most folks don't know where they fit, percentagewise, in the universe of taxpayers.
Fair enough.
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The All-Stunt McCain Campaign
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2008 Comment (3)I yesterday flagged a good McCain campaign pre-mortem. Here's another one, from my friend Bree Hocking over at Robert Emmet (or as I call it, where I blog when I'm not writing here at Thomas Jefferson Street). Bree correctly characterizes the McCain campaign as a "stunt campaign":
Unfortunately, the McCain campaign does have a narrative. It just happens to be better suited to a reality TV show given its plentiful supply of shocking revelations, nifty makeovers, sweeping accusations, temper tantrums, hurt feelings, grudges, backstabbing and unbelievable (and improbable) meteoric rises.
The whole thing is worth reading.
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Barack Obama Is No Socialist
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (105)We've been hearing some pretty hysterical things said by Barack Obama's critics about Obamanomics.
Socialist. Destroyer of wealth. Enemy of small business.
So, here's a primer on how Obama, if elected, will be "spreading the wealth around" in the next four years—and why he's far from a socialist radical.
And even, to a struggling but hopeful entrepreneur like myself (call me Jack the Writer), not cause for alarm.
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President Obama and a Democratic Congress? President McCain and a Republican Congress? Americans Split on Divided Government
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (5)Americans are divided about divided government, according to a new Gallup poll. According to the survey, registered voters prefer a Republican-controlled Congress by a 48-to-47 percent margin if Barack Obama is elected president (that's within the +/-3 percent margin of error and so is a tie). But they really don't want Republicans in charge if John McCain pulls a Truman and wins—in that case, they'd prefer Democrats by a 57-to-38 percent margin.
If you haven't already, check out our debate between Paul Begala and Tom DeLay on this issue. And of course: Let us know what you think.
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Disgusting Democratic Partisanship in Ohio
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (14)Here's insight into the thinking of some Democrats. In Ohio, they're attacking state Rep. Josh Mandel for having fulfilled his military obligation to serve in Iraq. As Joel Mowbray tells the story, Democrats are saying that Mandel neglected his constituents in favor of "serving George Bush." In these Democrats' view, the war in Iraq is evidently a purely partisan cause, not one sanctioned by the U.S. Congress and ordered by the U.S. president. These people want the United States to prevail only if there is a Democratic president and take delight in American defeat if the president is a Republican. I've seldom seen such a disgusting display of partisanship over country.
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Bonnie Erbe's Cheap Shot on Sarah Palin
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (21)After taking a barb from liberal journalist Elaine Lafferty for her dim assessment of Sarah Palin's intelligence, my Thomas Jefferson Street colleague Bonnie Erbe responds:
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The McCain-Palin Rift
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (33)The election's a week away, and the McCain campaign is burying itself before the electorate has a chance to do so. Could McCain's bid turn out to be the worst-run campaign in American presidential history?
It's certainly gunning for the honor. Read on, dear reader, George Stephanopoulos's take:
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John McCain Pre-Postmortem: The Maverick Couldn't Hack It as a Party Man
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (7)If you haven't seen it, check out Rich Lowry's excellent pre-mortem of John McCain on NRO:
This is the McCain paradox: No other Republican candidate had a character and background—as a courageously independent spirit—better suited to making the presidential campaign competitive this year. But perhaps no Republican candidate was so poorly suited to the task of running a presidential race.
He goes on, pretty well dissecting the decline and fall of his Maverick-ness (due to said quality).
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Sarah Palin's Intelligence (or Lack Thereof)
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (22)I had never heard of Elaine Lafferty before yesterday, but apparently she's a recovering left-wing journalist now consulting for the McCain campaign as an adviser to McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. She took me on for questioning Governor Palin's intelligence:
It's difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin's "intelligence," coming especially from women such as PBS's Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I'm agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high-toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her—love her or hate her—offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.
The "Susan Sontag of journalism moniker?" Inapt, inept, and poorly written. While Lafferty seems to think that Sontag, an influential essayist and writer, should be my role model, she's way off base. Sontag is perhaps most famous for writing: "The white race is the cancer of human history." (Partisan Review, Winter 1967, p. 57.)
This is not a philosophy with which I concur, nor is it one with which I should like to be associated. It's as racist, overwrought, and incorrect as any rash generalization about race could possibly be.
I find high irony in the coincidence that as this former editor of Ms. magazine and self-proclaimed Democrat dissed me, I was simultaneously E-mailed by a PR firm (Gehrung Associates), offering up an interview with a former high school acquaintance of Governor Palin that read as follows:
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Ted Stevens's Convictions: Good News for Conservatives With Conviction
Tweet Share on Facebook October 28, 2008 Comment (6)There's been precious little good news for conservatives lately, but Monday brought a hint of sunshine. Sen. Ted Stevens, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, was found guilty on all seven counts of corruption by a Washington, D.C., jury.
The longtime pol failed to disclose that he received things of value—notably, construction work on what he calls his "chalet"—from an Alaskan company to which he steered contracts, and for that, he is legally guilty. But in a broader sense, he is also morally guilty for turning the public coffers into a candy jar and corrupting his nominal party.
My old boss Robert Novak is fond of saying that there are three parties on Capitol Hill: the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Appropriators. And while Stevens's conviction will no doubt play to the GOP's disadvantage in the coming week, his exit can serve as a useful and necessary reminder to Republican lawmakers that, in the words of Barry Goldwater, they have worshiped false idols.
