It’s Tuesday, September 20th, 2011….and are we the only one wondering if the FBI is helping investigate….

….or covering….

….The Obamao’s backside; i.e., were they seizing evidence to preserve it, or….ensure it never sees the light of day?!?  Keenly inquiring minds want to know!

Now, here’s the Gouge!

First up, since we’re on the subject of keen minds, in his latest installment of the Morning Examiner, Conn Carroll astutely observes The Obamao’s finally….

Putting the “tax” back in “tax and spend”:

President Obama has already solidified his legacy as one of the biggest spenders of all time. He signed a $787 billion stimulus within weeks of being sworn into office and created a brand new entitlement that will spend over $1 trillion in just the first ten years.

Now Obama is proposing a slew of higher taxes to match his big spending. The center piece of Obama’s latest tax hike is a new millionaire’s levy, which Obama is pitching as “the Buffett Rule.” Senior administration officials say Obama will argue that those who make more than $1 million a year “should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay.” According to The New York Times, Obama will not be specific about tax rates, but officials say 450,000 taxpayers will see the government take more of their money.

Last week, the Democratic polling firm Third Way advised Democrats not to turn off independents with “doctrinaire, Mondale-inspired” attacks on “millionaires and billionaires.” Obama has clearly chosen to ignore that advice.

If it were possible (which it isn’t), we might almost feel sorry for The Boy Blunder, caught as he is, exactly like his despised predecessor, between:

• an implacable opposition
• a base that feels he isn’t ideologically pure enough; and, most importantly
• a middle sufficiently disturbed by what he’s done to date to support almost any candidate….but him.

Hence his plummeting polls….which we frankly wouldn’t read too much into at this point.

Given his support for dramatically-increased government spending, particularly No Child Left Behind and the prescription drug benefit, we rarely, if ever, gave pollsters anything but unfavorable ratings for Dubya outside of his prosecution of the War on Terror.  But our feelings didn’t impact our support for the GOP come November 2008.

We believe the same holds true for Bleeding Hearts across the country.  Whatever their views of his performance to date, come November 2012, they’ll be pulling the lever, pushing the button or hanging the chad next to his name.

Meanwhile, back at the gulag, in a follow-up to our earlier Attack Watch coverage, the WSJ details what has become….

Obama’s Twitter Disaster

In the run-up to 2012, a high-profile effort by the re-election campaign to counter critics has become an online bulletin board for jokes.

In 2008, reporters gushed about the Obama campaign’s brilliant use of the Internet and social media. In the run-up to 2012, a high-profile effort by the re-election campaign to counter critics has become an online bulletin board for jokes at President Obama’s expense.

Obama for America, the official campaign organization, recently rolled out AttackWatch.com. The website allows visitors to file reports when someone criticizes the president or his policies and purports to provide “the facts” to counter such “smears.” The site’s Twitter feed is attracting plenty of reports, but not necessarily the kind that campaign staff was expecting.

A user identified as Jon G. announced: “There’s a new Twitter account making President Obama look like a creepy, authoritarian nut-job: @AttackWatch.” Another user identifying himself as Matt Cover tweeted, “Someone told me the stimulus didn’t keep unemployment below 8%. That’s not true, is it?”

Another concerned citizen reported, “I saw 6 ATM’s in an alley, killing a job. It looked like a hate crime!” The site’s Twitter page recently featured so many zingers aimed at the president that it was hard to find actual Obama supporters whining about his critics. One tweeter noted that “the GOP won seats in NY and NV . . . I suspect interference by sane people . . . check that out please.” Another said, “Hey kids, are mommy and daddy talking bad about Obama? Be sure to report them at #attackwatch.”

One movie buff referenced the current Obama scandal over a bankrupt solar energy company that received federal loans: “Solyndra Green is people!”

Watching the attacks has proven to be a favorite pastime for conservatives. We’re guessing the Obama campaign staff isn’t laughing.

Speaking of those in over their heads, Arne Duncan and Reed Hastings offer their unqualified insight into the public education debacle, courtesy of the WSJ….

A Digital Promise to Our Nation’s Children

Student achievement and educational attainment have stagnated in the U.S., and a host of our leading economic competitors are now out-educating us. In a knowledge economy, such stagnation is a slow-acting recipe for obsolescence.

Imagine, though, an online high-school physics course that uses videogame graphics power to teach atomic interactions, or a second-grade online math curriculum that automatically adapts to individual students’ levels of knowledge. All of this will happen. The only question is: Will the U.S. lead the effort or will we follow other countries?

In the past two decades, technology has revolutionized the way Americans communicate, get news, socialize and conduct business. But technology has yet to transform our classrooms. At its full potential, technology could personalize and accelerate instruction for students of all educational levels. And it could provide equitable access to a world-class education for millions of students stuck attending substandard schools in cities, remote rural regions, and tribal reservations.

Other countries are far ahead of us in creating 21st-century classrooms. South Korea, which has the highest college attainment rate in the world, will phase out textbooks and replace them with digital products by 2015. Even Uruguay, a small country not known for leadership in technology, provides a computer for every student.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903927204576575101438816300.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTSecond

Soooo….a lack of computers explains why little Johnny and Sally can’t read, write or do simple arithmetic?!?

Here’s the juice: America’s public school performance has been steadily falling ever since the Department of Education was founded back in 1979 by….GASP!….Jimmy Carter; and that despite ever-increasing levels of spending resulting from what have become all-too predictable claims the problems are the result of inadequate funding.

This article’s authors (Duncan, current U.S. Secretary of Education, and Hastings, founder, chairman and CEO of Netflix), oversaw two of the worst-performing school systems in the country (having been superintendent of the Chicago city schools and president of the California Board of Education respectively), so we’re not certain why their opinions as to what ails American education should carry any more weight than the average man on the street.

What we do know is the reason little Johnny and Sally can’t read, write, add or subtract has nothing to do with any lack of computers or other high-tech instruments, and everything to do with an education establishment dedicated to one thing: the perpetuation of its power.

As the aptly-named Albert Shanker, president of the AFT and a man who truly had the impact of a virulent venereal disease upon the body politic, so famously said, “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”

By the way, in light of the following….

Netflix CEO admits ‘arrogance,’ renames disc business Qwikster

After watching customers leave and the company’s stock price plummet, Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings on Sunday admitted that he had fallen victim to “arrogance” and announced changes to the DVD offering.

The company’s DVD-by-mail service will get a new name, Qwikster, and add the option to order video games along with movies. “We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery,” Hastings wrote in a blog postand an email sent to subscribers. “We will keep the name ‘Netflix’ for streaming.”

Netflix in August announced that it would separate the pricing for online video streaming and DVDs, resulting in a hike of up to 60% for people who utilize both options. A number of customers were outraged, and last week Netflix disclosed that it is on track to lose 600,000 subscribers in the current quarter, after previously telling investors to expect that it would add 400,000.

As a result, Netflix stock fell 26% in two days, equating to a loss of $2.6 billion in market value.

….were we sitting on Hasting’s board of directors, we might suggest he focus on his day job!

Next up, the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York offers further evidence why Marco Rubio’s the only choice for the GOP’s VP slot, courtesy of the WSJ:

Byron York on Hispanic support for voter-identification laws.

In recent months, the Obama Justice Department and Democrats on Capitol Hill have mounted a full-scale assault on state voter identification laws. Accusing Republicans of trying to return to the days of Jim Crow, Democrats allege that the laws, many of which require a photo ID for voting, discriminate against blacks and Hispanics. But an extensive new poll of Hispanic voters in the key electoral states of Florida, Colorado, and New Mexico shows strong support for those very photo ID laws.

As part of a broad survey of Hispanic attitudes on a variety of political issues, the poll, conducted for the conservative group Resurgent Republic, asked a sample of 1,200 voters the following question: “As you may have heard, many states are considering laws that would require registered voters to present photo identification, such as a driver’s license, in order to cast their vote. Do you support or oppose those laws?”

In Florida, 88 percent of those surveyed said they support the laws, while just ten percent oppose them. In Colorado 71 percent support the law, while 26 percent oppose, and in New Mexico, 73 percent support the law, while 25 percent oppose. In general, Hispanic voters in Colorado and New Mexico are more liberal than those in Florida. But strong majorities in all three states favor photo ID laws.

The overwhelming support for photo ID contrasts sharply with the intense opposition to such laws in the Justice Department, the Democratic party, and the civil rights establishment. In June, Democratic National Committee chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz called voter ID laws the work of Republicans “who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally —and very transparently—block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote Democratic.”

. . . [T]he fight against photo ID laws will undoubtedly continue for years. But the new polls shows that among Hispanic voters at least, Democrats don’t have the public on their side.

Which brings us to the George Santayana Memorial “Those Who Do Not Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It” segment, courtesy of Warren Buffett, Battling B. Hussein and the WSJ:

The Buffett Alternative Tax

The rich don’t pay lower average tax rates.

Washington has repeated nearly every economic policy mistake of the 1930s in recent years, so why not repeat one of the bigger blunders of the 1960s too? We refer to President Obama’s proposal yesterday for a new “Buffett Rule” to raise taxes on Americans earning more than $1 million a year. This may sound familiar to readers of a certain age, because it is how the current, and much-hated, Alternative Minimum Tax was born.

Mr. Obama, meet Joe Barr. As LBJ’s last Treasury Secretary—he served only 30 days—Barr became famous for his January 1969 testimony before Congress that 21 millionaires had paid no income tax in 1967. No fewer than 115 tax returns reporting income above $200,000 had also paid no income tax, and Barr predicted a “taxpayer revolt” unless something was done about it.

Washington proceeded to bend tax policy to chase those 21 millionaires, and so we got the Minimum Tax of 1969 that later became the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT now hits some four million taxpayers, and 27% of households that paid it in 2008 had adjusted gross income of $200,000 or less.

Because it hits taxpayers with heavy deductions, the AMT wallops in particular the upper-middle-class suburbs in high-tax states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois and California. Congress keeps passing an annual reprieve to prevent the AMT from hitting another 20 million or so taxpayers, most of whom are far from millionaires.

So here we are back at the same old political stand, though even Mr. Obama concedes that today those he routinely calls “millionaires and billionaires” pay at least some tax. The President’s complaint, echoing billionaire Warren Buffett, is that too many billionaires pay a lower rate than regular salary earners. So even as he endorsed tax reform in general yesterday, Mr. Obama insisted that one of his reform “principles” is that people who make more than $1 million must pay a higher tax rate than middle-class earners.

There’s one small problem: The entire Buffett Rule premise is false, as the nearby table shows. (As is true with almost, quite literally, every supposed statistic ever quoted by a Liberal in history!) In 2008, the last year for which such data are available, the IRS reports that those who made more than $1 million in adjusted gross income paid an average income tax rate of 23.3%.

That’s slightly lower than the 24.1% rate paid by those making between $500,000 and $1 million, probably because the richest are like Mr. Buffett and earn more from capital gains and dividends. The rate for a relative handful of the rich—400 people—fell to 18%, the modern equivalent of Barr’s Gang of 21. But nearly all millionaires still paid a rate that is more than twice the 8.9% average rate paid by those earning between $50,000 and $100,000, and more than three times the 7.2% average rate paid by those earning less than $50,000. The larger point is that the claim that CEOs are routinely paying lower tax rates than their secretaries is Omaha hokum.

If Mr. Obama really wants all of these people to pay even more in taxes, there are only two ways to do so. One is to raise tax rates on capital gains, dividends and other investment income that is taxed at 15% and represents a great deal of income for the wealthy. (And REALLY kill investment!) This is probably Mr. Buffett’s tax secret, though to our knowledge he hasn’t released his returns to the public.

The problem is that this is a tax increase on capital investment, which the U.S. already taxes at prohibitive rates thanks to our high corporate tax rate of 35%. Capital gains and dividends are taxed twice, first as corporate profits and then as payouts to individuals. Their real capital gains tax rate is closer to 45% than 15%, which is why politicians of both parties have long supported a capital-gains rate differential.

The other way to raise taxes on the rare Buffett is with a new Minimum Tax, a la Joe Barr. But as we’ve seen with the AMT, while the politicians may start by chasing “millionaires and billionaires,” over time they always end up taxing the middle class because that’s where the real money is. (Which makes The Obamao a modern-day Willie Sutton of sorts!) Mr. Obama could tax every billionaire in America at a 100% rate and still wouldn’t make a dent in the federal deficit. He would, however, succeed in making those taxpayers invest less and search for tax shelters, assuming they didn’t move offshore.

We rehearse all of this because it shows that the real point of Mr. Obama’s Buffett Rule and his latest deficit proposal isn’t tax justice or good tax policy. It is all about re-election politics. Down in the polls and facing a sullen liberal base, Mr. Obama wants to rally the left behind him, and nothing fires them up like the pretense that government is sticking it to the rich. Mr. Obama is picking a tax fight that he apparently believes will carry him to re-election next year.

And what about the economy? Well, the plan Mr. Obama unveiled yesterday along with his Buffett Rule would sock the economy with $1.5 trillion in new taxes over 10 years, or about 1% of GDP. This includes the tax increases built into the 2013 expiration of the Bush-era tax rates but not those of ObamaCare. Anyone who believes this will help an economy that is creating few new jobs and growing by only 1% probably also believes that only the rich would pay the Buffett Alternative Tax.

Along with any other fanciful fable The Dear Leader might “hope” to foist as fact!

On the Lighter Side….

And in News of the Bizarre, bad news for carrot-tops everywhere:

World’s biggest sperm bank, Cryos, tells redheads: We don’t want your semen

“According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told the Pharisees that God commands us to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” There is no asterisk making this obligation null and void if circumstances require its fulfillment via government.”–Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, Sept 16, 2011

Ahhh….the Gospel according to St. Eugene; Robinson’s knowledge of Scripture is about as accurate, or credible, as the rest of the tired tripe he peddles.

Magoo