Todd Akin Ad: McCaskill Asks, ‘You don’t trust me?’

Todd Akin has released this new ad about his opponent. This seems like an effective, smart way to go after Air Claire.

Sarah Palin Responds

Sarah Palin had this to say on Facebook overnight:

Apparently President Obama can’t see Egypt and Libya from his house. On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks ever perpetrated on America, our embassy in Cairo and our consulate in Benghazi were attacked by violent Islamic mobs. In Cairo, they scaled the walls of our embassy, destroyed our flag, and replaced it with a black Islamic banner. In Benghazi, the armed gunmen set fire to our consulate and killed an American staff member. The Islamic radicals claim that these attacks are in protest to some film criticizing Islam. In response to this, the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued a statement that was so outrageous many of us thought it must be a satire. The embassy actually apologized to the violent mob attacking us, and it even went so far as to chastise those who use free speech to “hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” (Funny, the current administration has no problem hurting the “religious feelings” of Catholics.)

But where is the president’s statement about this? These countries represent his much touted “Arab Spring.” How’s that Arab Spring working out for us now? Have we received an apology yet from our “friends” in the Muslim Brotherhood for the assault on our embassy?

It’s about time our president stood up for America and condemned these Islamic extremists. I realize there must be a lot on his mind these days – what with our economy’s abysmal jobless numbers and Moody’s new warning about yet another downgrade to our nation’s credit rating due to the current administration’s failure to come up with a credible deficit reduction plan. And, of course, he has a busy schedule – with all those rounds of golf, softball interviews with the “Pimp with the Limp,” and fundraising dinners with his corporate cronies. But our nation’s security should be of utmost importance to our Commander-in-chief. America can’t afford any more “leading from behind” in such a dangerous world. We already know that President Obama likes to “speak softly” to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a “big stick” to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.

– Sarah Palin

Advertisement

New York Times Bias

In the span of five days, the Old York Times has demonstrated its bias. Take a look below at the Thursday edition, with a despicable picture of Paul Ryan practicing for his RNC speech later that day. The other image is on the Monday edition, showing the current President majestically speaking to a crowd in Colorado.

  

To prove my point, take a look at my post from Thursday showing a few of the front page headlines from other papers, this goes to show there were other photos that could have been used by the Old York Times. Instead of using a positive looking (or feeling) photo, the Old York Times opted for a despicable image.

Off the Tax Cliff He Goes

Tremendous op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal:

President Obama wants lower rates for GE and J.P. Morgan than for small business.

So the 2013 tax cliff is a big enough economic problem that President Obama now wants to postpone it for some taxpayers. But it isn’t so big that he’s willing to curb his desire to raise taxes on tens of thousands of job-creating businesses.

That’s the essence of Mr. Obama’s announcement Monday that he wants Congress to extend current tax rates for a year, but only for those making less than $200,000 a year. This is a political gambit designed to protect Democrats who are starting to feel queasy about opposing GOP plans to extend all of the Bush rates as the economy weakens again. The ploy could help Democrats if Republicans fall for it, but it won’t reduce the economic damage to the country.

By Mr. Obama’s economic logic, tax increases matter on middle-income earners but are irrelevant to everyone else. “By the way, these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are also the tax cuts that are least likely to promote growth,” as he put it Monday.

But Mr. Obama is demanding tax increases, not tax cuts, and large increases at that. If the Bush tax rates expire as scheduled on December 31, rates on the top two income brackets will jump to 39.6% from 35%, and 36% from 33%. Add the scheduled return of income phaseouts for exemptions and deductions, and the rates go up another two-percentage points—to at least 41% and 35%.

Mr. Obama claims this will merely return rates to what “we were paying under Bill Clinton,” but that’s not true either. It ignores his ObamaCare tax increase of 0.9% on top of the current 2.9% Medicare tax, plus a new 2.9% surcharge on investment income, including interest income.

That’s an additional 3.8% surcharge on investment income, and added to the Bush expirations would take the capital gains rate to 23.8% from 15% today, and the dividend tax rate to about 45% from 15%. In Mr. Obama’s economic world, tax cuts for middle-class “consumption” are good, but low rates to spur saving and investment are bad. This makes no sense because consumption is ultimately the product of saving and investment.

The President dismissed all of this as merely affecting 3% of small business owners. But that includes tens of thousands of the most productive, fastest-growing small businesses—those most likely to hire workers amid a national jobless rate of 8.2%.

Congress’s Joint Tax Committee—not a conservative outfit—estimates that in 2013 about 940,000 taxpayers will have enough business income to meet Mr. Obama’s tax increase threshold. And of the roughly $1.3 trillion in net business income, about 53% will get hit with the higher tax rates.

This is because millions of businesses report their income as sole proprietors and subchapter S corporations that file under the individual tax code. So Mr. Obama wants these businesses to pay higher tax rates than the giant likes of General Electric or J.P. Morgan. Does that qualify as “tax fairness”?

As for the impact on growth, even Keynesian theory holds that raising taxes should be avoided in a weak economy. That’s the argument that Mr. Obama used in late 2010 when he agreed with Republicans to extend the Bush rates through the end of 2012.

His assumption then was that the economy would be stronger now, but today we are in the third slow-growth patch in three years. Businesses are sitting on their wallets as they wait out the tax, regulatory and election uncertainty. Mr. Obama’s tax gambit will only increase that uncertainty and further retard investment and job creation.

We also know from experience that high earners are most able to move their money to avoid high tax rates. If they don’t have tax shelters at home, they can find opportunities abroad. Mr. Obama is running ads accusing Mitt Romney of sending jobs offshore, but the best way to send capital and jobs overseas is to raise U.S. tax rates to levels that aren’t competitive with the rest of the world.

Mr. Obama tacitly admits this when he talks about corporate tax reform, but raising tax rates merely increases the incentive for Congress to create more tax shelters. Mr. Obama promised Monday that if Republicans accept his proposal now, they can all come together on tax reform next year. But he knows that if tax rates rise, the Beltway’s revenue “scoring” conventions will make it that much harder to cut rates again as part of tax reform. In any event, he showed the value of his promises during his 2011 backroom budget charade with Speaker John Boehner.

The good news Monday is that Republicans in Congress and Mr. Romney seemed disinclined to take this class-war bait. Perhaps they realize that if they agree to raise some taxes but not others, they’ll dispirit their own base and hurt the economy. They can also put Senate Democrats on the spot by forcing them to choose between extending rates for everyone and accepting Mr. Obama’s tax increase. Republicans can win this debate by stressing growth over fairness and jobs over income redistribution.

A version of this article appeared July 10, 2012, on page A12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Off the Tax Cliff He Goes.

Peggy Noonan Gets It Right…Again

For the second Saturday in a row, Peggy Noonan has written the only thing we actually needed to read, everything else was just gravy.  You may recall, last week I also posted her weekly column in its entirety.

Here is the latest offering from Noonan, published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (highlights are my own):

Oh, for Some Kennedyesque Grace
Obama makes his campaign strategy clear. It’s divide and conquer.

These are things we know after President Obama’s speech Tuesday, in Washington, to a luncheon sponsored by the Associated Press:

The coming election fully occupies his mind. It is his subject matter now, and will be that of his administration. Everything they do between now and November will reflect this preoccupation.

He knows exactly what issues he’s running on and wants everyone else to know. He is not reserving fire, not launching small forays early in the battle. The strategy will be heavy and ceaseless bombardment. The speech announced his campaign’s central theme: The Republican Party is a radical and reactionary force arrayed in defense of one group, the rich and satisfied, while the president and his party struggle to protect the yearning middle class and preserve the American future.

This will be his campaign, minus only the wedge issues—the “war on women,” etc.—that will be newly deployed in the fall.

We know what criticisms and avenues of attack have pierced him. At the top of the speech he lauded, at some length and in a new way, local Catholic churches and social service agencies. That suggests internal polling shows he’s been damaged by the birth-control mandate. The bulk of the speech was devoted to painting Washington Republicans as extreme, outside the mainstream. This suggests his campaign believes the president has been damaged by charges that his leadership has been not center-left, but left. This is oratorical jujitsu: Launch your attack from where you are weak and hit your foe where he is strong. Mr. Obama said he does not back “class warfare,” does not want to “redistribute wealth,” and does not support “class envy.” It’s been a while since an American president felt he had to make such assertions.

The speech was an unusual and unleavened assault on the Republican Party. As such it was gutsy, no doubt sincere and arguably a little mad. The other party in a two-party center-right nation is anathema? There was no good-natured pledging to work together or find common ground, no argument that progress is possible. The GOP “will brook no compromise,” it is “peddling” destructive economic nostrums, it has “a radical vision” and wants to “let businesses pollute more,” “gut education,” and lay off firemen and cops. He said he is not speaking only of groups or factions within the GOP: “This is now the party’s governing platform.” Its leaders lack “humility.” Their claims to concern about the deficit are “laughable.”

The speech was not aimed at healing, ameliorating differences, or joining together. The president was not even trying to appear to be pursuing unity. He must think that is not possible for him now, as a stance.

There was a dissonance at the speech’s core. It was aimed at the center—he seemed to be arguing that to the extent he has not succeeded as president, it is because he was moderate, high-minded and took the long view—but lacked a centrist tone and spirit.

It was obviously not written for applause, which always comes as a relief now in our political leaders. Without applause they can develop a thought, which is why they like applause. In any case, he couldn’t ask a roomful of journalists to embarrass themselves by publicly cheering him. But I suspect the numbers-filled nature of the speech had another purpose: It was meant as a reference document, a fact sheet editors can keep on file to refer to in future coverage. “Jacksonville, Oct. 10—GOP nominee Mitt Romney today charged that the U.S. government has grown under President Obama by 25%. The president has previously responded that in fact the size of government went down during his tenure.”

An odd thing about this White House is that they don’t know who their friends are. Or perhaps they know but feel their friends never give them enough fealty and loyalty. Either way, that was a room full of friends. And yet the president rapped their knuckles for insufficient support. In the Q-and-A he offered criticism that “bears on your reporting”: “I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing, then they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.” An “equivalence is presented” that is unfortunate. It “reinforces . . . cynicism.” But the current debate is not “one of those situations where there’s an equivalence.” Journalists are failing to “put the current debate in some historical context.”

That “context,” as he sees it, is that Democrats are doing the right thing, Republicans the wrong thing, Democrats are serious, Republicans are “not serious.”

It was a remarkable moment. I’m surprised the press isn’t complaining and giving little speeches about reporting the facts without fear or favor.

I guess what’s most interesting is that it’s all us-versus-them. Normally at this point, early in an election year, an incumbent president operates within a rounded, nonthreatening blur. He’s sort of in a benign cloud, and then pokes his way out of it with strong, edged statements as the year progresses. Mr. Obama isn’t doing this. He wants it all stark and sharply defined early on. Is this good politics? It is unusual politics. Past presidents in crises have been sunny embracers.

The other day an experienced and accomplished Democratic lawyer spoke, with dismay, of the president’s earlier remarks on the ObamaCare litigation. Mr. Obama had said: “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” He referred to the court as “an unelected group of people” that might “somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”

It was vaguely menacing, and it garnered broad criticism. In the press it was characterized as a “brushback”—when a pitcher throws the ball close to a batter’s head to rattle him, to remind him he can be hurt.

The lawyer had studied under Archibald Cox. Cox, who served as John F. Kennedy’s Solicitor General, liked to tell his students of the time in 1962 when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Engel v. Vitale, a landmark ruling against school prayer.

The president feared a firestorm. The American people would not like it. He asked Cox for advice on what to say. Cox immediately prepared a long memo on the facts of the case, the history and the legal merits. Kennedy read it and threw it away. Dry data wouldn’t help.

Kennedy thought. What was the role of a president at such a time?

And this is what he said: We’re all going to have to pray more in our homes.

The decision, he said, was a reminder to every American family “that we can attend our churches with a good deal more fidelity,” and in this way “we can make the true meaning of prayer much more important in the lives of our children.”

He accepted the court’s decision, didn’t rile the populace, and preserved respect for the court while using its controversial ruling to put forward a good idea.

It was beautiful.

One misses that special grace.

Dick Cheney Returns, Again

/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”;}

Just when I thought my Sunday was going to be boring, even after my Dunkin Donuts coffee, Vice President Dick Cheney shows up on Fox News Sunday and drops the hammer, again, on the left and in specific, on Herr Obama.

Wow, what an interview that was.

When asked about his opinion of Obama, Dick Cheney unleashed: “I wasn’t a fan of his when he got elected, and my views haven’t changed any. I have serious doubts about his policies, serious doubts especially about the extent to which he understands and is prepared to do what needs to be done to defend the nation.” Ouch.

Politico has a good recap of the interview.

“The thing I keep coming back to time and time again, Chris, is the fact that we’ve gone for eight years without another attack,” Cheney said. “Now, how do you explain that? The critics don’t have any solution for that. They can criticize our policies, our way of doing business, but the results speak for themselves.”

He added: “It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well.”

Asked if he thinks “Democrats are soft on national security,” Cheney replied: “I do.”

FoxNews.com recaps the interview as well.

RealClearPolitics.com has 4 minutes of the video.

If you’re a serious addict, Real Clear Politics has posted the transcript of the interview here.

Vice President Cheney’s book is not due to be released until 2011, I’m going to have a tough time waiting that long.