Obama Asks for Budget Cuts - by 0.002%

President Obama is really showing some spending restraint here. He's calling on his cabinet members to cut $100,000,000 from a budget he has inflated to $3,550,000,000,000. That's less than two thousandths of a percentage point.

Farewell, kids' future.

The Miserly Obama Administration

I wonder what the average annual charitable donation is for our illustrious congresspeople. If Obama and Biden are remotely representative, the amount is truly pitiful.

2008 charitable contributions (as percent of income):

Obama: 5.7%
Biden: 0.3%

It's no wonder these people have no faith in goodwill of humanity. They can't fathom how someone would be willing to give more than a few percentage points of their income to charity. Maybe that's why they only see a bigger government as the solution.

On the flip side, the previous administration:

Bush: 23%
Cheney: 70%

So the people who are going to raise our taxes through the roof are the same people who have more trouble parting with their own cash to help others. The contradiction is nauseating.

Okay, Obama is Scaring Me

So all the banks have received all sorts of government cash in the form of TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds. Even for those banks who didn't really want the money, the administration basically threatened them into taking it. To what end?

Control. If a bank is sitting on millions or billions in government money, the government then has the power to dictate how that money is used.

But what if a bank wishes to give back its TARP allotment? With interest? Good idea, right?

Not to the Obama administration.

From an article in the Wall Street Journal:

Under the Bush team a prominent and profitable bank, under threat of a damaging public audit, was forced to accept less than $1 billion of TARP money. The government insisted on buying a new class of preferred stock which gave it a tiny, minority position. The money flowed to the bank. Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons. It wanted to recapitalize the banks to halt a financial panic.

Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He's been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no. The bank has also been threatened with "adverse" consequences if its chairman persists. That's politics talking, not economics.

So now the government can assume nearly unlimited control over banks forced to hold onto government loans that those banks don't want. It's heavy-handed politics at its scariest...so far.

Giving to Charity? That's a Taxing.

When times are hard, people are out of work, and charitable giving takes on an especially significant role in caring for the needy--what is one of the worst things a government can do?

Tax charitable donations.

Yet this is precisely what President Obama has proposed. Taxing charitable donations from those who can actually afford to give more. His proposal would affect individuals earning $200K and married couples earning $250K. This amounts to a greater tax penalty for married couples than for single individuals.

I think Obama has covered his bases when it comes to doing harm: the very poor, the charitable organizations and the institute of marriage.

I can't conceive the levels of hubris required to even suggest such an idea. I can only wonder if this scheme is simply a red herring to take the focus away from the rest of Obama's disastrous budget plans.

I recommend that anyone reading this contact their representatives in Washington and tell them to abandon this absurdity when it comes to a vote.

Economists Against Stimulus Package? Impossible!

How in the world can economists discard the foregone conclusion that huge government intervention is needed RIGHT NOW to avoid financial catastrophe? Oh--because they understand economics, and don't turn a blind eye to history.

Here's an ad from libertarian the CATO institute castigating the Obama administration and its support of the proposed government "stimulus" package, signed by various faculty from hudreds of universities. Click on the image to read the entire piece.

So if reducing the government burden on the economy is Economics 101, why are all the leftie politicians so gung ho about the stimulus package? As White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel put it, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Yeah, way to put country first there, Rahm.

Criminals for Obama

It's no wonder the democrats want to bestow voting rights upon convicted felons. Here are some dudes who got their mugshots taken wearing Obama attire. Two of the three are in there for misdemeanor prostitution, the other is for drunk driving.



Is it fair to judge a candidate by the makeup of their supporters? Sure, why not?

Must-Read: Obama, the postmodernist

It's a rare article that hits the nail on the head so squarely that I just have to stand back in awe of the achievement. Here's such an article, by Jonah Goldberg in USA Today.

It's all about "Obama, the postmodernist." And it reveals Obama's "it's true because I say it is" approach to addressing innumerable issues. You really must read this article in its entirety. I've never seen a campaign summed up quite so well.

A couple snippets:

"Asked to define sin, Barack Obama replied that sin is "being out of alignment with my values." Statements such as this have caused many people to wonder whether Obama has a God complex or is hopelessly arrogant. For the record, sin isn't being out of alignment with your own values (if it were, Hannibal Lecter wouldn't be a sinner because his values hold that it's OK to eat people) nor is it being out of alignment with Obama's — unless he really is our Savior."

"On the troop surge, Obama's position has changed countless times, but he says it's unchanged. Worse, he has this grating habit of prefacing his new positions with something like "as I said at the time." But he didn't say "it" at the time, he said the opposite of "it." But saying that he said "it" is, to him, the same as having said "it.""

Okay, those clips don't give it justice. Just read it for yourself.

Obama Elicits the First Race-Baiting Comment

Of course Barack Obama is the first to fire a racially-charged shot at the McCain camp.

"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said. "You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

"Bush and McCain" haven't said anything of the sort. Obama is saying that's what they will do. So he's preemptively condemning them for using race to scare off Obama votes, something they haven't come close to doing. So much for the high road, Obama.