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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2008-06-24

It's Not The Reflexive Liberalism That Gets Me . . . 

So much as the willful indifference to reality.

Who am I talking about? Why, Senator Barack H. Obama, of course. Two instances:

:on raising the capital gains tax--

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

Though, I suppose, to be "fair" (is there any word in the lexicon more abused than "fair"), raising the capital gains tax probably would result in more "fairness"--lop 20% off of everybody's money and the differences DO get smaller. To paraphrase my favorite Pixar movie, "when everybody's below average, NOBODY's below average."

:on ethanol--(from the Corner)

But is heavily subsidized midwestern bioethanol the way to go? It doesn't seem to be (not least because of what we now know to be its impact on global food prices [not to mention the greenhouse gasses it produces]). That doesn't seem to have deterred Obama, a supporter of the recent subsidy-laden farm bill. Worse still, he's an opponent of relaxing tariffs on imported Brazilian sugar cane ethanol, a far more energy efficient fuel than its corn-fed alternative.

So, I guess the issue really isn't energy independence for Obama, . . . or global warming, . . or helping feed the poor.

The issue, it would seem, really just boils down to giant-government programs to subsidize corn farms in the American midwest. Not a lobbyist, I suppose (though they most certainly have theirs), but certainly a special interest.

:on prosecuting the War on Terror--

"And, you know, let's take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks — for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. "

And many of the people behind 9/11 are now, likewise, incapacitated, as are many people behind the next attack and the one after that . . . incapacitated because THEY ARE DEAD!! That is how you prosecute a War. If Obama is truly so blind to the reality that the arrest of those behind the 93 attack did NOTHING to deter the Khobar Towers Attack, the East African Embassies Attack, the U.S.S. Cole Attack, or 9/11, then he truly, TRULY is way out of his depth here.

There are a lot of liberals out there, many of whom I don't think of as naive, dangerous or dumb. Obama's indifference to reality almost guarantees that he is one of those three things, if not all three.

It's a serious world, and its not time for rookies.
Posted by: Michael / 6/24/2008 01:50:00 PM

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