The Real Obama--or His Evil Twin, Skippy?

Pres. Obama outfoxed Hillary Clinton on his way to the Democrat nomination for president by pandering to the left wing of the party with red-meat platform that was part populist, part socialist. He then trounced his Republican opponent John McCain by tacking back to the center to attract moderate Republicans and independents to his campaign.

One of candidate Obama’s pitches to seduce moderates and take the political center away from Sen. McCain was a proposal to eliminate the 14% capital gains tax for small and start-up businesses. Small business was the sacred cow of this campaign, with both candidates falling over themselves to appeal to our nation of shopkeepers.

The proposal itself was modest, but it was a good symbol to demonstrate that the Democrats would help the job-creation generator that is small business. It was a simple, less costly way to attack the growing unemployment problem. After all, small businesses create three-quarters of the jobs in this country.

But instead, candidate Obama’s plan to eliminate the small business tax was emasculated to a 50% reduction instead in what the Wall Street Journal has called the Democrat's "self-stimulus" bill that the President is to sign today .

So who’s to blame? Certainly not the Republicans whose playbook for stimulus is cutting taxes.

The villain here is the Democrats who own Congress now and who detest tax cuts on ideological grounds. This is because Republicans like George Bush and Ronald Reagan (not to mention Democrat patron saint John F. Kennedy) were able to create millions of jobs and lift the country out of past recessions by cutting taxes and putting money immediately into the hands of the middle class.

Unfortunately, the Democrats continue to view taxes as divine retribution to business for making profits. And this crew led by Nancy Pelosi wastes no chance to try and punish business with a messianic fervor. So small business becomes the scapegoat for past conservative economic successes.

While the problem may be House Democrats, Pres. Obama is far from blameless here. He could have sent a strong message to middle class America and his party that the first “post-partisan” president won’t tolerate fighting ideological battles where the losers are the American people. Unfortunately, he chose not to do so.

So we’re left to wonder if the President is really the post-partisan centrist that millions of Americans thought they were electing. Or, is he really the left-leaning candidate who campaigned on using the tax code to punish success and redistribute wealth?

After 3 weeks in the White House he hasn’t done much to burnish those post-partisan credentials.

Just thought you might like to know.

Fascism You Can Believe In

Fascism is an authoritarian ideology marked by the following beliefs:

• A single party state
• Subordination of the individual to a central government
• Centralization of authority
• Reliance on central government for national solutions and services
• Opposition to conservatism, capitalism and entrepreneurship

I bring this up because virtually unnoticed this week, amid the political background noise of Roland Burris and Al Franken, the House of Representatives (actually the Democrat majority) adopted their House Rules for the 111th Congress. Included in these Rules are significant changes from the past. These changes say a lot about the Democrat majority and where this country is headed over the next several years.

The changes include:

• Elimination of term limits for committee chairmen. No longer will chairmen be elected on merit. Now the old leftist bulls who came to Washington in the radical '60s and '70s will be in charge again.


• Suspension of cost-containment measures for Medicare. Medicare is the fastest rising entitlement program. Now there are no controls on it, paving the way for socialized medicine.


• Fast track tax increases. Gone is the ability for the minority (Republicans) to strike any tax increase that does not have a corresponding way to make up the lost revenue.


• Virtual elimination of any chance for tax cuts so long as this gang is in power. The only way to pass a tax cut now will be to propose a tax increase somewhere else in the budget. In effect you can change taxes but you can't lower them. Call it permanent taxation.


• Elimination of the "motion to recommit" tactic. This little-known procedure is a cherished right of House Members. It has been in effect, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, for more than a century! It gives the minority party one last chance to work out a compromise with the majority party before a bill is passed. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has eliminated this hallmark of the two-party system in order to jam her leftist agenda down the throat of House members.

Before my leftist friends accuse me of over-reacting by using the F-word, please look at what these changes mean a few things for the House and for the country:

1. There is little stopping Congress now from taking a new, sharp tack to the left. This includes socialized medicine, expansion of entitlement programs on a scale not seen since Lyndon Johnson, neutering of our military and intelligence capabilities, and punitive taxation of those people who have supported this country for so long.
2. All of those pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, pro-defense Democrat Members recruited by party leaders over the last two election cycles so the Democrats in could take control of Congress have been duped. They have no pull in a Congress controlled by Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel and Henry Waxman They're simply the Chorus in this Greek tragedy.
3. All of those conservatives and centrists who voted for "change" in the last election, will probably end up with more change that they bargained for. The mischief the Pelosi gang can cause over the next two or four years will take years to unravel, if it ever can be unraveled.

Just thought you might like to know.