Obama '08?

That doesn't even make sense. How does saying "like it or not, we're still a superpower" constitute a "direct contradiction to everything America believes in"? Do Americans not believe that the United States are a superpower?

old europe wrote:

That doesn't even make sense. How does saying "like it or not, we're still a superpower" constitute a "direct contradiction to everything America believes in"? Do Americans not believe that the United States are a superpower?

Common sense does not seem to make sense to the liberal leftist mind, oe. I can't explain why you cannot grasp a simple concept. Some do, some don't.

Cyclops, you got him. You know it; he knows it; we all know it. Does this need to continue for the next several months?

CONTEXT AND SUPERPOWERS.... I really had every intention of ignoring this, but since the Associated Press has decided to make it one of the leading political stories of the day, it's probably worth taking a moment to highlight reality.

Sarah Palin criticized President Barack Obama on Saturday for saying America is a military superpower "whether we like it or not," saying she was taken aback by his comment.

"I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower," the former Alaska governor said. "I don't understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful."

Reading comprehension isn't one of the former half-term governor's strengths, so perhaps it's not surprising that Palin is badly misquoting, and deliberately misunderstanding, what the president said. Here's Obama's actual quote:

"[W]hat we can make sure of is, is that we are constantly present, constantly engaged, and setting out very clearly to both sides our belief that not only is it in the interests of each party to resolve these conflicts but it's also in the interest of the United States. It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure."

Palin, who is painfully, conspicuously unintelligent, wasn't quite sharp enough to understand the president's remarks. Perhaps he should have chosen words with fewer syllables.

He didn't say there's a potential problem with the U.S. being a superpower; he said it's important for Americans to appreciate the global responsibilities that come with that power when conflicts arise, and the sweeping effects of these conflicts on the country's global interests.

As Greg Sargent explained the other day, "Palin and her team of ghostwriters plucked Obama's remark out of context to quote him saying 'whether we like it or not,' we are a superpower. In reality, he was saying that 'whether we like it or not,' we get pulled into international conflicts that cost us American lives -- so it's in our security interests to resolve them."

It's really not that hard to understand, so long as you read the words and recognize the scope of the United States' global influence.
"Steve Benen 8:00 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (29)

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19234&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
SET ON A VAT? THEN GET RID OF INCOME TAX

A value-added tax, or VAT, will be rationalized as necessary to restore fiscal equilibrium. But without ending the income tax, a VAT would be just a gargantuan instrument for further subjugating Americans to government, says columnist George F. Will.

A VAT is collected on value added at stages during the process of production, but most of its burden is borne by consumers. They file no VAT returns, so its stealthiness delights the political class, which can increase it in small, barely noticed increments, with every percentage point yielding another $100 billion, says Will.

Although the nation's welfare often varies inversely with that of the political class, a VAT would ameliorate a real problem, says Will:

Americans consume too much and save too little. Furthermore, today's baroque tax code drives economic distortions and enables corruptions.

Corporations do not pay taxes, they collect them, passing the burden to consumers as a cost of production. And corporate taxation is a feast of rent-seeking -- a cornucopia of credits, exemptions and other subsidies conferred by the political class on favored, and grateful, corporations, says Will.

Because the income tax is not broadly based, it radiates moral hazard. Its incentives are for perverse behavior:

The top 1 percent of earners provide 40 percent of that tax's receipts.
The top 5 percent provide 61 percent.
The bottom 50 percent provide 3 percent.
So the tax makes a substantial majority complacent about government's growth, says Will.

Increasingly, the income tax is codified envy. A VAT is the political class's recourse when the resources of the minority that is targeted by the envious are insufficient to finance ravenous government, says Will.

And because the 16th Amendment will not be repealed, adoption of a VAT would proclaim the impossibility of serious spending reductions, and hence would be the obituary for the Founders' vision of limited government.

Source: George F. Will, "Set On A VAT? Then Get Rid Of Income Tax," Investor's Business Daily, April 19, 2010.

The game plan used for ObamaCare is about to be repeated...
for the "cap and tax" energy tax.

You recall how ObamaCare got passed...

Obama's bulldog Rahm Emanuel is dispatched to Capitol Hill to lay out the game plan...

The bill is "introduced" but we never see the real language...

Fearing public scrutiny and opposition, Dems skip the normal committee process altogether and rush the bill to the floor for a vote.

All the real work is done in a secret backroom.

+ + Energy Tax moving forward like ObamaCare

That's precisely what is happening right now with the "cap and tax" energy tax.

The Washington Post reported that Emanuel "met with a slew of environmental and Democratic leaders to discuss climate legislation."

Then, Senators Kerry, Liebermann and Graham announced that they will be introducing their bill later this month (April 26).

But there's one catch...

They aren't going to actually "introduce" the bill. Instead, they are going to hand it to Harry Reid so Reid can take it straight to the Senate floor and bypass the committees!

In Liebermann's own words.

"If we introduce [the carbon tax bill], it'll get referred to committees," Lieberman said. "We want [Majority Leader Reid] to be able to work with it and bring it out onto the floor as a leader whenever he's ready."

America's Constitutionalist Revolt
By Lawrence Kudlow
April 16, 2010

So much is being written in the mainstream media about who the tea partiers are, but very little is being recorded about what these folks are actually saying.

We know that this is a decentralized grassroots movement, with many different voices hailing from many different towns across the country. But the tea-party message comes together in the "Contract From America," the product of an online vote orchestrated by Ryan Hecker, a Houston tea-party activist and national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots.

With nearly 500,000 votes recorded in less than two months, this Contract forms a blueprint of tea-party policy goals and beliefs.
...

Of the top-10 planks in the Contract, the No. 1 issue is protect the Constitution. That's followed by reject cap-and-trade, demand a balanced budget and enact fundamental tax reform. And then comes number five: Restore fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government in Washington.

Note that two of the top-five priorities of the tea partiers mention the Constitution.

Filling out the Contract, the bottom-five planks are end runaway government spending; defund, repeal and replace government-run health care; pass an all-of-the-above energy policy; stop the pork; and stop the tax hikes.

What's so significant to me about this tea-party Contract From America is the strong emphasis on constitutional limits and restraints on legislation, spending, taxing and government control of the economy. Undoubtedly, the emphasis is there because no one trusts Washington.

As I read this Contract, tea partiers are reminding all of us of the need for the Constitution to protect our freedoms. They're calling for a renewal of constitutional values, including -- first and foremost -- a return to constitutional limits on government. The tea partiers who responded to this poll are demanding a rebirth of the consent of the governed. The government works for us, we don't work for it.

All this makes me think of President Reagan, who never quite succeeded in gaining a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget, or for limits on spending, or for a two-thirds congressional majority for any new tax hikes. But throughout his presidency, and for many years before, the Gipper argued for constitutional limits on government, especially government spending.

And now this message is being echoed perfectly in the tea-party Contract From America. In effect, it picks up where Reagan left off.

The tea partiers, whom I call free-market populists, desire a return to Reaganism. In particular, their demands for a balanced budget (third plank), for restoring fiscal responsibility (fifth plank), for ending massive government spending (sixth plank), and for stopping the pork (ninth plank) all underscore the populist revolt against runaway government spending, and therefore runaway government power.

There are mentions in the Contract of tax reform and stopping tax hikes. But it is pretty clear to everyone nowadays that the massive run-up in spending of recent years will inevitably result in an equally massive tax-hike movement -- that is, unless the spending is strictly curbed and reduced.

Yet the tea partiers don't trust Congress to do this, so they want to bring in constitutional restraint.

A recent survey by the Brookings Institution spells out this spend-and-tax problem with great clarity. Under current spending trends, tax-the-rich efforts to bring the deficit to just 3 percent of gross domestic product -- not balance, mind you, but 3 percent deficit -- would require a nearly 80 percent marginal tax rate on the most successful earners. And if taxes are raised across-the-board, the marginal rate would rise to nearly 50 percent for the top earners, with state and local tax burdens bringing it up to 60 percent. Otherwise, a European-style value-added tax (VAT) would become necessary.

The tea partiers know this, and they don't like it one bit. And so, at bottom, they have formed a constitutionalist movement to revolt against big government and big taxes -- and oh, by the way, to stand against big-government control of large chunks of the economy, such as energy and health care.

Harking back to the Founders' principles of constitutional limits to government is a very powerful message. It's a message of freedom, especially economic freedom. The tea partiers have delivered an extremely accurate diagnostic of what ails America right now: Government is growing too fast, too much, too expensively and in too many places -- and in the process it is crowding out our cherished economic freedom.

It's as though the tea partiers are saying this great country will never fulfill its long-run potential to prosper, create jobs and lead the world unless constitutional limits to government are restored.

Now, as the tea partiers rally across the country, the big question is only this: Will the political class get it?
---
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

A recent survey by the Brookings Institution spells out this spend-and-tax problem with great clarity. Under current spending trends, tax-the-rich efforts to bring the deficit to just 3 percent of gross domestic product -- not balance, mind you, but 3 percent deficit -- would require a nearly 80 percent marginal tax rate on the most successful earners. And if taxes are raised across-the-board, the marginal rate would rise to nearly 50 percent for the top earners, with state and local tax burdens bringing it up to 60 percent. Otherwise, a European-style value-added tax (VAT) would become necessary.

Cyclops, you got him. You know it; he knows it; we all know it. Does this need to continue for the next several months?

The federal government did not, does not , and will not transfer anyone's lawfully earned money to pay for Tea Party rallies. Tea Party members pay their own individual costs for attending Tea Party rallies.

http://www.visiontoamerica.org/story/kenyan-official-obama-born-here.html
Kenyan official: "Obama born here"

A Kenyan lawmaker told the nation's Parliament last month that Barack Obama was born in Africa and is therefore "not even a native American."

During debate over the draft of a new Kenyan constitution, James Orengo, the country's minister of lands and a member of parliament for the Ugenya constituency, cited America's election of a Kenyan-born president as an example of what can be accomplished when diverse peoples unite:

"If America was living in a situation where they feared ethnicity and did not see itself as a multiparty state or nation," Orengo posited, "how could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the president of America?"

The federal government did not, does not , and will not transfer anyone's lawfully earned money to pay for Tea Party rallies. Tea Party members pay their own individual costs for attending Tea Party rallies.

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/04/michele_bachman_76.php
Not that Bachmann broke the law or anything, according to what legal eagles tell the Star Tribune, but some local Tea Party activists are a bit miffed.

Learning that taxpayer funds were used did strike a note of discomfort with Twin Cities Tea Party co-founder Deanna Boss, who arranged for more than 100 Minnesotans to attend the rally. Boss said she would have preferred that private donors had financed the event, given her and other activists' criticism of excessive government spending.

http://www.alan.com/2010/04/14/bachmann-tea-party-rally/
Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s November event that brought thousands of tea partiers to the Capitol for a “House Call on Washington” to reign in government and stop big spending cost taxpayers $14,000.
...
Learning that taxpayer funds were used did strike a note of discomfort with Twin Cities Tea Party co-founder Deanna Boss, who arranged for more than 100 Minnesotans to attend the rally. Boss said she would have preferred that private donors had financed the event, given her and other activists’ criticism of excessive government spending.

http://minnesotaindependent.com/57574/bachmann-anti-health-care-reform-rally-cost-taxpayers-14000
The Star Tribune’s Eric Roper reports that Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “House Call” against health care reform last November cost taxpayers $13,600. The event drew about 10,000 Tea Partiers from around the country to Washington, DC. Critics say the event was a rally and should be subject to rules regarding rallies, but Bachmann’s office contends it was a press conference.

The Strib spoke with Twin Cities Tea Party co-founder Deanna Boss, who said the event should have been paid for with private donations.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0414/tea-party-rally-cost-taxpayers-14000/
As Michele Bachmann riled a group of feisty Tea Partiers to rail against taxes and government spending, taxpayers were quietly forced to pick up a $13,600 tab for their festivities.