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The real Obama is back, according to Charles Krauthammer.
In a 2008 debate, Charlie Gibson asked Barack Obama about his support for raising capital gains taxes, given the historical record of government losing net revenue as a result. Obama persevered: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
A most revealing window into our president’s political core: To impose a tax that actually impoverishes our communal bank account (the U.S. Treasury) is ridiculous. It is nothing but punitive. It benefits no one — not the rich, not the poor, not the government. For Obama, however, it brings fairness, which is priceless.
Now that he’s president, Obama has actually gone and done it. He’s just proposed a $1.5 trillion tsunami of tax hikes featuring a “Buffett rule” that, although as yet deliberately still fuzzy, clearly includes raising capital gains taxes.
He also insists again upon raising marginal rates on “millionaire” couples making $250,000 or more. But roughly half the income of small businesses (i.e., those filing individual returns) would be hit by this tax increase. Therefore, if we are to believe Obama’s own logic that his proposed business tax credits would increase hiring, then surely this tax hike will reduce small-business hiring.
But what are jobs when fairness is at stake? Fairness trumps growth. Fairness trumps revenue. Fairness trumps economic logic. …
Some have asked if the president will decide to quit. Ed Morrissey says perhaps he already has.
In my latest column for The Week, I ask if we have been pondering the wrong question about Barack Obama and his falling poll numbers. We’ve analyzed the potential for Obama to pull an LBJ and pull out of the 2012 election, or for Democrats to pressure him into quitting the race if he doesn’t reach that conclusion on his own. With the obvious implications of Obama’s two proposals this month, the better question is whether he’s already quit being President in favor of just being a candidate:
“The plan itself broke no new ground. Indeed, it closely resembles the 2009 stimulus bill, with its mix of infrastructure spending, temporary tax breaks, and another round of bailouts for states. But if the rehashed jobs plan was a passive disappointment, Obama’s new deficit reduction plan is an aggressive partisan attack — the very kind that Obama blasted in his joint-session speech earlier in the month.” …
Andrew Malcolm spots The One touting the “intercontinental railroad.” It might be near the transcontinental one.
“We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad,” Barack Obama.
That’s what the president of the United States flat-out said Thursday during what was supposed to be a photo op to sell his jobs plan next to an allegedly deteriorating highway bridge.
A railroad between continents? A railroad from, say, New York City all the way across the Atlantic to France? Now, THAT would be a bridge!
It’s yet another humorous gaffe by the Harvard graduate, overlooked by most media for whatever reason. Like Obama saying Abraham-Come-Lately Lincoln was the founder of the Republican Party. Or Navy corpseman. Or the Austrian language. Fifty-seven states. The president of Canada. Etc.
If you talk as much as this guy likes to talk instead of governing, if you believe you are a Real Good Talker as much as this guy does, you’re gonna blow a few lines. But this many?
No doubt, we’ll see a collection of Obama’s Best Bombs on ‘Saturday Night Live’ this weekend, one right after the other. No doubt.
One week after calling the joint session speech a “bold bid to reset his presidency” Clive Crook is finding flaws.
Barack Obama’s bid to seize the initiative with a second fiscal stimulus is barely a week old and, as the president prepares to make a second announcement on the subject on Monday, already in trouble. As I argued last week, part one of the plan was good and the president’s pitch to a joint session of Congress well received in Washington. The rest of the country was less impressed.
A new CBS poll gives Mr Obama his lowest approval rating (43 per cent) and highest disapproval rating (50 per cent) of this series to date. In other polls he is doing even worse. Last week, soon after Mr Obama’s big speech, a Republican won what Democrats thought was a safe congressional seat in New York. …
… One day, Mr Obama is the pragmatic outsider trying to talk sense into Congress. The next, he is the ardent liberal complaining about social injustice and corporate jets. The president keeps canceling himself out. Nobody is impressed, people stop listening, and he becomes irrelevant.
In the past week, Mr Obama has been attacked not just by disappointed progressives and disappointed centrists, but by party professionals close to the White House. The smell of scandal rises from a loan guarantee for a failed “green energy” venture. Excerpts from a forthcoming book show a White House at war with itself. James Carville, formerly a top Democratic strategist, tells the president to panic. Nothing is working. It seems all of a piece. …
Toby Harnden lists ten reasons why last Thursday’s debate was horrible for Rick Perry.
Let’s start with a few caveats. Rick Perry has many powerful attributes as a presidential candidates. He’s been a conservative 10-year governor of the huge state of Texas. He has a lot of Tea Party support. His chief rival Mitt Romney has a number of well-documented weaknesses. While the media often fixates on theatrics like debates, there’s a case to be made that they seldom decide who becomes a party’s nominee. And it is still early days for Perry, who has been in the race for barely six weeks. He could well become the Republican nominee – and the next President of the United States.
Having said all that, this was, unarguably, an awful night for Perry. While it might not change the dynamic of the Republican race overnight, it could well prompt supporters and donors to pause. There is likely to be rash of media commentary and newspaper stories questioning whether, after the initially very successful launch of his candidacy, he is truly ready for primetime. So in what ways was his performance so bad? here are 10 things to think about:
1. This was Perry’s third debate. He’s no longer the rookie. Romney is much more experienced in these forums (he did 13 debates in the 2008 race and has done five this time) but Perry can’t get a pass forever. Having been below par at the Reagan Library debate in Simi Valley, California, he needed to raise his game this time. he didn’t.
2. Once again, Perry faded as the debate went on. Some Republicans speculate that he is in pain from recent back surgery and that standing up for two hours is difficult for him. He seems to find it hard at times to concentrate.Whatever the reasons for this, it needs to be tackled and corrected. …
The Economist wants to know when the word “awesome” became so awesome.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was awesome.
If this sounds like an irreverent approach to the famous first lines of the gospel of John, I can assure you it’s not. “The word was God,” according to the original. But repeatedly in the Bible, God is “awesome”. Nehemiah, Deuteronomy and the Psalms refer to “the great and awesome God”, “mighty and awesome”, and ask worshippers to praise his “great and awesome name”. How did this once-awe-inspiring word become a nearly meaningless bit of verbiage referring to anything even mildly good? …
… “Awesome” became the default descriptor for anything good. In 1982, I was seven and I swallowed it whole. It stayed with me for decades. In 2005, I remember meeting a girl when I had just seen “Batman Begins”, the moody psychological picture that reinvigorated a tired franchise. “It’s awesome,” I told her. “Awesome. Just awesome.” She wondered, she later said, what kind of journalist had just one adjective in his vocabulary. Somehow, she married me all the same. …
Translations from Russian have similar problems. Ivan the Terrible is “Ivan Grozny” in Russian. Grozny is a Russian word that means awesome. It is a derivative of the word for thunder. Helps explain the White Russian disdain for Chechnya and the capital there – Grozny.
Remember when the “wave” was getting raves at baseball games. Seems some moron is intent on starting it again. The Week has the story.
Whoops. A “hilarious” photo of President Obama — taken during his visit this week to the United Nations — is eliciting chuckles worldwide. In a group shot of world leaders at an Open Government Partnership event, the president “moronically” waves his hand — blocking the face of Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj. (See the image at right and below). While many people initially suspected that this image was a Photoshop creation, it appears to be the real deal. Naturally, commentators are cracking wise. Here, a sampling: …