Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Happy Tax Day Suckas!

Remember the Clintons paid some big bucks, but I'm not sure the amount is "fair." Being good Dems, I'm sure they are adding an extra gift in their check. The Clintons made $109 million last year. Yep, they're just like the rest of us bitter beer drinking, bowling, hunting, Jesus loving, racist freaks.

Oh, and has Obama released his tax records? Why, no, he has not. Hmmmmm...... Since we're on the topic of Obama, James Lileks synthesizes the deal here:

I’ve been trying to find the right words for a certain theory, and I can’t quite do it yet. It has to do with how a candidate feels about America – they have to be fundamentally, dispositionally comfortable with it. Not in a way that glosses over or excuses its flaws, but comfortable in the way a long-term married couple is comfortable. That includes not delighting in its flaws, or crowing them at every opportunity as proof of your love. I mean a simple quiet sense of awe and pride, its challenges and flaws and uniqueness and tragedies considered. You don’t win the office by being angry we’re not something else; you win by being enthused we can be something better. You can fake the latter. But people sense the former.
Obama wants to divorce America and trade her in for an old, wrinkled European former model. I don't get it. Or maybe he pines for the needy, superstitious, African type. Or maybe he kinda digs the authoritarian, Marxist efficiency of the big boned Russian. I could go all day making offensive generalizations. The bottom line is that Obama doesn't love the one he's with. And it shows.

John Hawkins snarkily notes Obama's major achievement thus far in his life:
Barack Obama is an ultra-liberal, phony, racialist snob who holds ordinary Americans in contempt and is running for a job he's unqualified to hold in the first place. However, there is one thing he has been able to accomplish that no one else ever has: he's the first person who has ever been able to make Republicans see any good in Hillary Clinton.

Now, getting back to taxes and the welfare they fund. Why do those dumb Pennsylvania hicks vote Republican when Democrats what to diaper their behinds and wipe it too? Megan McCardle has a theory:
On the other hand, perhaps some of the clusters aren't quite as unrelated as they seem. In small communities, economics can be a way to exert social control. And I don't mean that in necessarily a bad way. In many ways, communities are much better disbursers of charity than the government; they have the local information to determine who is needy and who needs some strong encouragement to get a job, take the baby to the doctor, and mow their lawn. As anyone who has had to move in with their parents after a financial reversal can attest, Mom is an excellent social worker--it's absolutely astonishing how fast you get your life back together when you have to sit down with her at the dinner table every night.

Small communities are also extremely attuned to property rights, because things like property lines matter to them in ways that they don't matter to city dwellers; conversely, they have a lot less shared space relative to private space. Those core beliefs about things like property rights and work arguably build up into something akin to the Republican economic agenda.
Maybe the hicks also know that Billy Bob who has been bitching about his lack of a job, has had trouble in good economies and bad and the workers aren't interested in floating his sorry ass. It's also called pride. Sheesh! Who wants to pay for groceries with food stamps? No one with any pride. In dire straights, maybe. But the Democrats need to extricate their craniums from their nether regions. America in 2008 is not America of 1930. People are not that bad off. It's tight. It's not starvation. They need to get some perspective.

Small town folks might call it "tightening the belt". Big city folks imagine their own beneficence--raising taxes to help the little people. They might have enough money that it won't hurt them, but the middle class and working stiffs will be squeezed harder. Maybe the dumb gun nuts aren't so dumb after all. Receiving help from the government is rarely the kind of help anyone wants.

Bottom line: Keep taxes low and stay out of my business.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The more I hear and read about the Obama's the more I am amazed that he has been able to win so many people over. I have to agree with John Hawkins, the man is not qualified to be President of this country.

Also, I wonder when people make as much money as the Clinton's do and the Obama's do, if they are even capable of relating to people like us who work very hard for every dime we make...as do the majority of the American people.

Anonymous said...

Melissa, I can't remember the name of the book that Chalmers recommended a while back in one of the comment threats. It was something like "Freakonomia" or something of that sort. I've heard of it before but I have not pulled it up on Amazon till today. I obviously don't have the right name. Would you be so kind to help me out? Thanks so much! :-)

Anonymous said...

Well Melissa, I finally was able to find the book on my own.

The book is called: Freakonomics by: Steven D.Levitt

Anonymous said...

Obama wants to divorce America and trade her in for an old, wrinkled European former model.

By "Europe", do you mean the future Islamic Republic of Eurabia?