Not long ago President Obama lit what Mark Steyn could have referred to as his latest exploding cigar. By now, you’re probably familiar with "Julia", the composite woman (not to be confused with the president’s composite girlfriends) who we learn lives a wonderful life with the comfort of cradle to grave assistance from the government, and how terrible her life would be as a result of a Romney presidency. Like manna from Heaven the conservatives had a field day with this one. The Romney campaign immediately fired off some tweets in response, we saw the Twittersphere light up with "#Im Not Julia" themed tweets, and of course, we saw a fair amount of ridicule in conservative publications and blogs.

We saw too may timeline parodies to list – PJ Media did a good job with their take. National Review’s Rich Lowry pointed out how condescending and insulting toward women the campaign is. Over at Flopping Aces Warren Beatty (the blogger, not the actor) submitted a guest post pointing out the dangers of becoming a society of Julias, which included a great comment below this story from FA contributor Skookum, who made an observation about the name choice that got a chuckle from every George Orwell fan who scrolled down to the comments.

When the Julia story broke I was ready to throw in my two cents, but as my faithful readers know I don’t write on a topic that someone who’s a better writer than me has already written. I was thinking of putting together another parody timeline that was completely empty showing how Julia’s life would have been had her mother chosen to terminate her with a government funded abortion, but too many other timeline mockups are already out there.

The above mentioned Warren Beatty stole a lot of my thunder, but thankfully for me he stopped short of a very disturbing conclusion in the motivation behind this ad campaign. First, I have two sidebars to help illustrate my point.

In a recent episode of Castle, Nathan Fillion’s character (Yes, THAT Nathan Fillion for all of the Firefly geeks out there) has a pretty close relationship with his soon to be college aged student daughter. One of their bonding activities is chasing each other around their home playing laser tag. In this episode the daughter didn’t want to play, saying ""I think it’s time to holster the laser guns and be adults". This gave her middle aged father a moment of painful introspection after getting a lesson on maturity from his teenaged daughter.

Another example goes back to an ad campaign for men’s underwear from the early 90′s. In my weekly subscription to Sports Illustrated one of these ads would appear just below the reader letters and showed men doing some low-key activities while wearing the company’s underwear. One that stuck with me was one that featured a 20-something looking guy in his briefs and undershirt looking very happy while carrying a little boy up on his shoulders with the boy holding a toy airplane over his head. The main ad text read something like, "Remember when you were young and couldn’t wait to grow up and be a man? How’s it going?" That ad really made me take a hard look at myself and my 20-something "Straight laced workaholic in a low paying job by day, bar hopping idiot by night" life style. I guess that the ad didn’t impact me too much, as it would take me almost another 20 years to get my act together enough to get married to a woman like Sister Babe.

So what is the conclusion that I’m trying to make? Team Obama put in time and effort to put together the entire Julia campaign. Whenever anyone is advertising or selling any point, there is one key factor that goes into the process before the first word is typed or pen meets paper.

"Will this appeal to my target audience?" The message of Julia is that one should expect to spend one’s entire life dependent on others to some degree at every stage of life.

At no point does she become that adult and take full responsibility for Julia. And if someone else is paying your bills, that gives them control over your life, in Julia’s case at every step. Personally, I’ve never met any kids who talked about how much they love having their parents and teachers tell them what to do, any elderly men or women eagerly awaiting the day they go into a nursing home or any former inmates reminiscing about the simplicity of prison life.

The most disturbing element of Julia is who the president thinks we are. Apparently the administration thinks that we have lost our sense of individuality, of ambition, and yes, responsibility. At every stage of our lives we shouldn’t just hope for a helping hand, we should expect and are entitled to that helping hand. It can be paid for by one of the various bogeymen that leftists love to cite in big businesses or the wealthy. Unfortunately when you sit down and do the math, neither one can ever produce enough to pay for a nation of Julias. At some point someone has to be the individual or group of individuals who produce more than they take. Thomas Sowell recently wrote a great article how politicians can can legislate dependency to keep their hold on their jobs even if they are ultimately killing their constituency.

Do we want to go down the path of Greece or France? How about the model that Detroit set for riches to rags, or California’s inevitable day of reckoning? As my previous post on paying off our national debt shows, we have some serious problems that won’t start getting better until we start taking them seriously. We don’t have to watch our country drive off a cliff. But for that to happen we have to choose, both as a nation and as individuals to not let that happen. But if we truly have become the nation of Julias that President Obama thinks we are then we will not survive as a society. As much as it pains me to say this, if he is right I’m not sure that we deserve to.

Cross Posted at Brother Bob’s Blog

On Thursday, April 3, 2012, the Barack Obama re-election campaign released “The Life of Julia.” In it are 12 stages in the life of “Julia,” a fictional woman used to demonstrate how Obama’s policies would help her. Throughout the stages in her life, Julia is depicted as someone who benefits from the programs either created by or funded by Obama. The obvious message is that a vote for Obama will keep the largesse flowing for all, not just fictional Julia.

One very real problem with the “Julia” concept is that throughout the 12 stages nowhere is it mentioned that “Julia” ever gives back for any of the benefits she receives. That is particularly true when “Julia” is 27 years old, when she is 31 years old, when she is 37 years old, when she is 42 years old, and when she’s 67 years old.

The ad says that when “Julia” is 27 years old, she “…has worked full-time as a web designer.” Nowhere is there a mention of her “giving back,” to, as Elizabeth Warren says, “…pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

The ad continues, “Thanks to Obamacare, her health insurance is required to cover birth control ….” Now, as a man, I cannot put myself in “Julia’s” shoes, but I can think of only one reason why she would need birth control – promiscuity (women readers, please help me here). Assuming that I am correct, I (and about half of US citizens) should see some direct benefit from the money we (involuntarily) spent. Does the ad mention that? As (the late) John Belushi used to say on SNL, “Noooooooooooooooooooooooo.”

The ad says that when “Julia” is 31 years old, she “…decides to have a child.” Nowhere is a husband mentioned, so the assumption of promiscuity is supported. Again, we taxpayers who are forced to support her decision receive no direct benefits, no giving back. At this time I think it best to say that a vast majority of taxpayers would not want direct benefits from “Julia.” But that’s not the point here. We taxpayers would like to see some direct benefit from money we are paying. But the ad fails to mention how we, who pay for HER decision, will ever receive or even see the benefits.

The ad continues, “Throughout her pregnancy, she benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and free screenings under health care reform.” Focus on the word “free.”

First, nothing is free. Someone, somewhere, somehow paid for “Julia’s” free services. That is true unless she somehow got the doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and office workers to donate their time, efforts, and supplies to support her decision. And that doesn’t include all the other people she had to get to donate time: the cement workers, carpenters, electricians, and roofers who built the office where she received “free” services, the banker who financed the office, the salespeople who sold all the supplies to build the office, all the people who manufactured the building supplies, or the people who provided transportation to the office. The list is literally endless.

Second, there is no free lunch, as the old saying goes. Some quid pro quo is expected. As the Merriam-Webster dictionary so well puts it, “In politics nobody does something for nothing: there’s always a quid pro quo involved.” The quid pro quo here is rather obvious: “Julia” (and all like her) should vote for Obama in order to keep all the free services coming.

The ad says that when “Julia” is 37 years old, “Julia’s son Zachary starts kindergarten.” This means that the entire “Julia” cycle begins anew.

The ad says that when “Julia” is 42 years old, she, “…starts her own web business.” That’s great for “Julia,” but did she design a web page for me or any other taxpayers? The ad continues, “President Obama’s tax cuts for small businesses like Julia’s help her to get started.” Again, great for “Julia,” but do we taxpayers see any direct benefit from the tax cuts? Nothing mentions anything about her giving back to any taxpayers who supported her.

The ad says that when “Julia” is 67 years old, she, “…retires.” The ad continues, “After years of contributing to Social Security, she receives monthly benefits that help her retire comfortably,….” There are at least two things wrong with this concept.

First, there is the “retire comfortably” concept. As can be seen here, many seniors are not able to retire comfortably. Here are two examples:

• Bettye Guillory 98, of Federal Way, WA, gets $1,354 a month from Social Security. Of that, she pays $1,105 a month for room and board in an adult family home (Medicare pays the rest) and about $185 a month for health insurance. She has less than $65 a month for other expenses. With less than $65 a month to spend, she can’t buy the fresh fruits and vegetables, real orange juice, green tea and organic eggs she’d like to have to supplement her diet.
• Imogene Goss, 80, of Kansas City, MO, likes to walk around a lake that is six or seven miles from her home. But when Goss calculated that driving to the lake was costing her $5 a week, she brought her exercise routine back home.

The last cost-of-living increase for Social Security recipients and federal retirees was in 2009. Retirees on fixed incomes are looking for ways to economize as prices of essential goods increase and their incomes remain unchanged. And the situation is only going to get worse. As Charles Krauthammer wrote in March, 2011, “The Social Security trust fund is a fiction.” Further, people who depend on Social Security alone can expect a “minimum wage” lifestyle. Comfortable, indeed!

Second, why should I (or any taxpayer) be forced to support “Julia’s” retirement? It’s fine if I choose to support her retirement, but the last time I looked, FICA taxes withheld were mandatory. Do I receive any direct benefit from supporting her retirement? Is “Julia” going to give back by supporting my retirement? As Linda Chavez wrote, “…Social Security recipients receive more in benefits over their lifetimes than they and their employers contributed in taxes during their working years, the system functions only because there are enough current workers making additional payments into the fund. This is why some people describe Social Security as a giant pyramid scheme.” Somehow the ad fails to mention “Julia’s solution to this problem, only that she retires comfortably.

But the ad does say that Social Security will “help her retire comfortably.” The key word here is “help.” The implication is that “Julia” is able to be comfortable by combining personal savings with Social Security. She should be able to save vast amounts of money since there is a taxpayer funded program for everything else she needs in life.

Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter of the Barack Obama “Truth Team” had this to say about “The Life of Julia”: “It’s a great tool for the Truth Team and our goal of making sure everyone gets the facts they need.”

The only problems with “The Life of Julia” are that, (1) everything in the ad is, sadly, true, that there is a program for every stage of “Julia’s” life for which we taxpayers pay and pay and …, (2) nowhere is it mentioned that we taxpayers ever receive any benefits from supporting “Julia,” (3) or that “Julia” exhibit any personal responsibility for any actions she takes or decisions she makes (other than the retirement implication), and (4) nowhere does anyone, least of all “Julia,” identify how these benefits will be paid for.

But then I guess we are mean and heartless for expecting “Julia” to look after herself, to experience the results of her decisions, to delay some gratification in favor of inevitable old age.

If ever there was an illustration of the difference between conservatism and liberalism, “The Life of Julia” is it.

But that’s just my opinion.

”It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.” – Ronald Reagan

Cross-posted at RWNO, my personal web site.

She obviously figures she owes her success to her ability to manipulate the victimization of America’s First Nation People to secure a teaching position at Harvard; since, according to Ms Warren, no one achieves success on their own.

I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for.

You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

What Delusion Does Warren Live In

Thus Warren justifies the theft of identity and her selfish use of another’s victimization by using her dubious claim of being 1/32 Cherokee. A boast that put her in the front of the line to be hired at Harvard by providing two minority Affirmative Action claims: that of being a woman and that of being a First Nation individual. Being part of the only minority group that is a majority, is not being disputed, since being a woman requires no prescribed amount of integrity, but this claim of being a blonde haired blue eyed Cherokee might raise a few eyebrows on the reservation.

Warren would have been more accurate by claiming to be a Marxist, such a claim would have been more believable after she exposed her Marxist beliefs than her claims of being the only blue eyed blonde Cherokee in the history of the Cherokee Nation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In all fairness, let us not forget, it was as easy for Harvard personnel to recognize the ruse as it was for us, but they stood to promote their image by having the only blue eyed blonde Cherokee law professor in the world, they were obviously counting coup in the tribal lodge of academia.

Click here to view the embedded video.

While I find Romney to be a poor Republican candidate, and not really a conservative at all, I find agreement with him on some issues and this one I do.

Yesterday Obama released the creepy slideshow “The Life of Julia” in which they depict how a female is taken care of from cradle to grave by the taxpayer. It’s a perfect example of the welfare state that is bankrupting this country. In the utopian world of Julia she gets money for college, for her medical bills, she gets to sue her employer for more money, she gets free contraception, loans for a business, and then some retirement money until she dies. Somehow Obama believes we will have the money for all that for the next 80 years.

It’s a tall tale for sure.

Rich Lowry

Julia’s central relationship is to the state. It is her educator, banker, health-care provider, venture capitalist, and retirement fund. And she is, fundamentally, a taker. Every benefit she gets is cut-rate or free. She apparently doesn’t worry about paying taxes. It doesn’t enter her mind that the programs supporting her might add to the debt or might have unintended consequences. She has no moral qualms about forcing others to pay for her contraception, and her sense of patriotic duty is limited to getting as much government help as she can.

The alleged benefits to Julia are exaggerated or nonexistent. Pity the poor thing if she depends on Head Start for her launch into the world. A study by the Department of Health and Human Services last year found that positive educational effects tend to wear off by the first grade. The government assistance she gets for financing college feeds into the maw of inexorable tuition increases. The chances that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is going to boost her pay, as a web designer, are essentially nil. Julia is getting punked.

Her life is framed to show that she gets more from President Barack Obama than from Republicans. The same contrast could be achieved differently. She could lose her web-design job and go on unemployment, which President Obama always wants to extend despite Republican objections. With her family’s income dropping, she could resort to the food-stamp program, which has expanded massively under President Obama despite Republicans’ inveighing against the trend. These examples don’t suit the campaign’s purposes, though. They show government to be a poor substitute for the robust recovery that President Obama hasn’t delivered even as he has endeavored to make Julia’s birth-control pills free.

The point of view of “The Life of Julia” is profoundly condescending. It assumes that giving people things will distract them from larger considerations of the public weal — the economy, debt, the health of the culture.

Now where do I find agreement with Romney? Here he answers a question from a real version of Julia:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I agree with him, but does he really mean it? Romneycare may suggest otherwise.

Bill Whittle over at Pajamas Media had a great piece in his Afterburner segment this week. Calling statistician William M. Briggs’ “The love of theory is the root of all evil” “The Best Sentence Ever”, Whittle discusses how the love of the theory of Communism caused the deaths of well over 100,000 million people during the 20th century. The crux of his piece is that liberals, living in their world of theory and planning have no clue how the world actually works.

Just such liberal fatuousness was on display in Saturday’s New York Times. The paper ran a 3,800 word piece bemoaning the fact that Apple Computer, the most valuable company in the world was short changing California (and the United States) on taxes. Somehow, the company, which employs over 20,000 people in the state is not doing its fair share. According to the Times, Apple, which is headquartered in Cupertino, California, could earn up to $46 billion this year worldwide and California is getting bilked. The Times states that Apple utilizes offices as close as Nevada and as far away as Luxemburg to shield itself from California and US taxes.

While the Times explicitly states that Apple is not responsible for California’s budget problems, in a piece Mark Antony would be proud of, it helpfully points out: Apple serves as a window on how technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age and ill suited to today’s digital economy. And if the subtlety makes the point too opaque, the Gray Lady makes it clear: The growing digital economy presents a conundrum for lawmakers overseeing corporate taxation: although technology is now one of the nation’s largest and most valued industries, many tech companies are among the least taxed…

The message is clear. The fact that California is an economic basket case is Apple’s fault, (along with other high tech companies). It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that California’s budget grew by 40% from 2000 to 2010 while the population grew by a mere 13%. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the government has been chasing companies and jobs out of the state for decades with their regulatory straightjacket. It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that state employees, most supported by unions, earn an average salary of $68,000 (vs. a state average salary of $54,000) and total compensation in excess of $105,000. No, the problem is that Apple is legally taking advantage of the tax code to reduce the amount of money it pours down the bottomless pit known as Sacramento. That should be obvious to anyone.

The Times suggests that if Apple were not using these “tactics” its federal taxes would have been $2.4 billion higher in 2011. Assuming that Apple does half of its US work in California, that figure suggests that Apple would have paid approximately $300 million dollars more in California taxes than it actually did. Obviously that would have fixed the state’s $25 billion shortfall.

To put this in perspective it might be helpful to examine what Apple actually does in California. It employs over 20,000 people in the Golden State, with an average salary of $70,000. Their $1.5 billion in wages contribute $132 million directly to the state’s coffers via income taxes. According to Apple, for every one employee in the United States, it creates or supports 11 jobs outside the company via suppliers, partners, service providers etc. Taking Apple’s metric and applying it to those 20,000 employees would give you an additional 220,000 California jobs. Given that the average salary in California is $54,000, those 220,000 employees doing the jobs created or supported by Apple generate an additional $12 billion in salary which would generate another $1.05 billion in state income taxes. Then of course all of those employees likely spent most of that $13 billion wage income in California, which in turn generated much income and more taxes.

Not to be forgotten are the shareholders such as California’s many shareholders, pensioners and mutual fund holders who own shares of Apple stock. The country’s largest pension fund, CalPERS, owns 2.8 Apple shares and provides benefits to more than 1.6 million California employees and retirees. Because the company has done such a good job of husbanding its resources, its stock has quadrupled in three years, generating almost half a trillion dollars in wealth. No doubt many of those investors and pensioners have enjoyed the capital gains Apple has provided, which are of course taxed as ordinary income at 9.3%. Not only did those capital gains generate tens of millions of dollars to state coffers, they no doubt generated revenue at the local coffee shops, grocery stores and movie theaters as well.

The Times provides a perfect example of Whittle’s point. California is a fiscal basket case and the solution is fairly straightforward: Change the tax code to force companies like Apple to pony up hundreds of millions or billions more in taxes. As liberals often do, they sit in their little cubbyholes and play with their calculators. “We can raise taxes or plug that loophole and the money will just pour in”. They rarely look at how the world really works. Certainly California and Congressional legislators could revise the tax code to make it more difficult for companies like Apple to reduce their tax burden. But would it generate a tax windfall? A balanced California budget? Not likely. What’s more likely is that Apple would start looking to reduce its California footprint and begin to open offices and actually employ people outside the state and the country, imperiling the real impact the company has on the state.

Despite decades of crystal clear proof that they simply don’t work, liberals maintain their devotion to the theories of high taxes, centralization and state control like members of the People’s Temple following every Jim Jones dictum as if it were gospel, regardless of its rather negative consequences. The only problem is, they not only want to drink the Kool-aid themselves, they want to force us to drink it as well. As a good libertarian I’m happy to let anyone put anything in their bodies they choose, but I’d just rather not drink the cyanide myself.

Welfare spending overall has increased 41%, food stamp enrollment has gone up by 70% since Obama has been in office, 5.4 million people have signed up for Social Security Disability payments. Tack on the massive abuse of EBT cards like this heroin dealer:

Kimball Clark, 45, was locked up Friday on drug-dealing charges — again — when he was overheard using his one phone call to ask the person on the other end of the line to “get my EBT card and go to the ATM and get the money to bail me out, get me outa here tonight,” according to a Boston police report.

And you can see just how much of a welfare nation we have become since Obama has come into office. Now people can use their welfare cards to take out cash and use it for whatever they want. Cigarettes, alcohol, and bail money. And according to this report from Massachusetts cash withdrawals make up 85% of all EBT card transactions:

According to that EBT Commission report, 85% of EBT benefits, or $77 Million in a three month period between October and Dec. 2011, were translated into cash at ATMs.

If it’s that bad in Massachusetts, how bad do you think it is in Minnesota:

Or how about California?

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Who would want to work in America?”

Chris Christie said it best:

It’s because government’s now telling them, stop dreaming, stop striving, we’ll take care of you. We’re turning into a paternalistic entitlement society. That will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally,” Christie told Bush, Henry Kissinger and an assortment of Republican governors in a theater at the New York Historical Society.

“When the American people no longer believe that this is a place where only their willingness to work hard and to act with honor and integrity and ingenuity determines their success in life, then we’ll have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check,” Christie said.

The Democrats love it, they want this because people like that upstanding citizen in the video above will keep voting for them, keep voting for Obama….just as long as that taxpayer money gets loaded onto their card.

Sybil Tries The Wild Look of James Brown To Draw Attention

A fading actress and empty vessel has exposed more than her genitalia to the public, Cybil Shepherd known for her appearances in “The Last Picture Show” and for a nude photo session in Playboy, launched into a semi-coherent rant on straw men and GOP bullies who plan to take away her “Constitutional” right to abortions and condoms, during an appearance on “CBS This Morning”.

She has vowed to stand up to these straw men (?) and put her life on the line to protect the Constitutionally protected rights of abortion on demand and government provided condoms and contraception, for those moments when a girl loses control of her emotions and can no longer accept responsibility for her actions. She has become the geriatric fluke for those countless women who can’t keep their legs crossed when someone whispers sweet promises of roles or advantages in their ear or tickles their fancy with wild and ruthless abandon.

“Abortion is our constitutional right,”

She then told the world about her plan to march on Washington wearing a bullet proof vest, in a one woman march. She informed the audience that both she and her mother fear for her life over her defiance and courageous willingness to stand up to the straw men of the GOP. She worries that they will strike her down, before she has a chance to speak out on her feelings.

“I’m not going to wear a bulletproof vest. My mother’s scared for me,”

Oh Cybil, the world admires your selfless struggle for the right to kill fetuses on demand and your right to demand free condoms and pills that allow you to fornicate on demand to avoid all those inconvenient pregnancies and having to endure so many abortions, but before you are fitted for a custom kevlar vest that will exploit your feminine charms to their best advantage, please take the time to explain where in the Constitution you have the right to abortions on demand and free contraception.

I’m sure you will draw a lot of attention to your cause and the election of the Third World dog eater in the White House by cavorting down Pennsylvania Avenue with nothing on but your pink kevlar vest with its plunging neckline and your ample cleavage peeking out so shyly, but while exposing your ass once again to the world, please share with us your vast and intimate knowledge of the Constitution. Not in the biblical sense of knowing, for even Hollywood Elites with hinges on their heels will find it hard to know the Constitution by sleeping with it; just try to explain why the rest of us are responsible for your poor decisions and willingness to engage in a degenerate life-style.

Cybil in all seriousness, your concern about being the next to be “taken out” or in reality the first one to be taken out, I suggest you seek professional help, for such paranoia is most often attributed to illicit drugs or psychosis; either way, you should seek treatment rather than leading other simple minded souls astray with your senseless rants. I realize that actors are judged by their ability to lead others beyond the realm of reality, but you have no script and you are reading from your own delusions. Do the world a favor and accept the fact that young, beautiful, empty headed actresses can command attention, but middle aged, empty headed actresses will never re-inflate their sagging careers and body parts with senseless rants and self-serving theatrical heroics when no danger exists.

There are facts of life Cybil, facts that are more important than one night stands and the indiscriminate but oh so important sessions on the casting couch, we all age Cybil, some of us age better than others, but if we travel through life relying on a transient beauty, we have much less dignity for the stretch run. Unfortunately, bimbos without a credible cerebral capacity have little or no relevancy in later life. Trying to be relevant when you have obviously compromised your intellect to fine tune the power in your loins, leaves you short on the skills required for life when no one is lusting for 3o minutes of wild and wooly humpy rumpy with you. You made your choices in life, your vacuous and paranoid rambling make it obvious to all but the most mindless drones. You should retire from public view, watch your old movies and dream of your former self, back when your sexuality made you relevant.

Don’t you just love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning?

Having criticized her Republican opponent for voting against a millionaires’ tax measure, U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said here Friday that she opted not to pay a voluntary higher tax rate in Massachusetts.

“I paid my taxes, and I did not make a charitable contribution to the state,” Warren, who worked with the Obama administration to create the new consumer financial protection bureau, said when asked if she paid a 5.85 percent state income tax instead of the standard 5.3 percent — a choice given to Massachusetts taxpayers.

I see. So let me get this straight. If a rich person feels more money should be going into the treasury of the state it should NOT be a voluntary contribution, instead it MUST be a forced tax. Meanwhile she wants to be elected into a position where she will force more money into the treasury by raising taxes, which then gives her more power to spend spend and spend some more like a good little liberal

“The problem with running a campaign based on self-righteousness and moral superiority is that you had better live up to the same standard you would impose on everyone else,” Barnett said. “Millionaire Warren lectures others about their obligation and responsibility to pay higher taxes, but she refuses to pay the optional higher rate available in Massachusetts.”

Barnett continued, “This is the sort of hypocrisy and double-speak voters are sick and tired of hearing from politicians, especially those who can’t keep their hands out of others’ pocketbooks.”

Hypocrisy, thy name is Elisabeth Warren.

“”If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from….You make a big election about small things,” ” – Barack Obama 08/28/08

Obama uttered these words just a few short years ago. It was supposedly a charge against politics as usual.

Now, he is following the politics as usual playbook to a tee.

And as he continues on his “anything but my record” tour he had the gall to say Ronald Reagan would be FOR the Buffet Rule:

President Obama continued his push Wednesday to build support for the Buffett rule by suggesting that Ronald Reagan would’ve backed the plan to set a minimum 30 percent income tax for the wealthiest Americans.

“If it will help convince folks in Congress to make the right choice, we could call it the Reagan rule instead of the Buffett rule,” Obama said in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

“I’m not the first president to call for this idea that everyone has to do their fair share,” he said, quoting one speech in which Reagan said it was “crazy” for the rich to be able to use loopholes to get out of paying taxes. “He thought that in America the wealthiest should pay their fair share and he said so.”

This new talking point was spearheaded by ThinkProgress which put up a video of a speech Reagan gave in 1985 in which he remarked about an executive paying a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Yet Reagan told the story as part of a larger pitch for tax reform. Unlike Obama, Reagan was interested in targeting loopholes so that he could lower rates, to allow people to keep more of their own money.

“Lower, flatter tax rates will give Americans more confidence in the future,” Reagan said in the speech referenced by Obama. “It’ll mean if you work overtime or get a raise or a promotion or if you have a small business and are able to turn a profit, more of that extra income will end up where it belongs — in your wallets, not in Uncle Sam’s pockets.”

And Obama isn’t trying to close any of those loopholes. Whether the rich get richer or the poor get poorer is not the point. It’s getting re-elected, that’s the point. We spend 1,500 billion a year and he’s making speech after speech about a rule that would net 4-5 extra billion a year. What’s the point?

To get re-elected. To get his Socialist vision of our country more widely accepted. And when he is re-elected (and he will be, Romney has no chance) he can then begin pushing for the expiration of ALL the Bush tax cuts, including those on the middle class. That is the only way they can pay for the entitlement state envisioned by Obama and pals. Hell, even that won’t pay for it.

Sneaky Obama:

The Buffett rule is really nothing more than a sneaky way for Mr. Obama to justify doubling the capital gains and dividend tax rate to 30% from 15% today. That’s the real spread-the-wealth target. The problem is that this is a tax on capital that is needed for firms to grow and hire more workers. Mr. Obama says he wants an investment-led recovery, not one led by consumption, but how will investment be spurred by doubling the tax on it?

The only investment and hiring the Buffett rule is likely to spur will be outside the United States—in China, Germany, India, and other competitors with much more investment-friendly tax regimes.

Which means we’re screwed.

Exit quote:

So now we find out today that not only was Ronald Reagan for tax increases on the rich, Ronald Reagan was pro-abortion. Have you ever stopped to realize this bunch of people, the Democrat Party, Barack Obama, they hate Reagan. They have always hated Reagan. They engage in revisionist history about the Reagan years. But when they need to move their agenda forward, when they need to marshal support for what they’re trying to do, who do they invoke? LBJ? No. Teddy Kennedy? No. JFK? No. RFK? No. Bill Clinton? No. They invoke Ronald Reagan, the beloved Ronaldus Magnus.

Now, what does that tell you? They have to take one of the most popular presidents in history, a Republican, a person with whom they have absolutely nothing in common and without any agreement whatsoever and try to convince the American people Barack Obama is Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan did what Obama’s doing. It is shameless. It is offensive, and, like everything else Obama is doing, it’s a lie.

Exit video: (especially the last half when Stephen Hayes asks “don’t reporters have a job to do?”….why yes they do….to ensure Obama gets re-elected)

This past week the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against ObamaCare. The decision, expected to be handed down in June may very well be the single most important case in the history of the United States.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the perennial swing vote on the court pinpointed the argument on Tuesday:

Here the government is saying that the federal government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases, and that changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.

He is making the observation that if ObamaCare stands, the federal government can not only tell you what you are prohibited from doing, but at the same time it can tell you what you must do.

Donald Verrilli, the administration’s attorney, suggests that the reason the government can regulate the healthcare market is that that everyone participates in it at some point.

Justice Scalia points out that everyone participates in the food market and therefore the government could use that rationale to force everyone to buy broccoli.

Verrilli’s retort: Though the two markets do share that one trait, they remain distinctly different. The healthcare market, he said, contains participation that is “often unpredictable and often involuntary.” The food market is not that.

Which in turn caused Justice Alito to ask about burial insurance, the cause of which is often unpredictable and almost always involuntary.

You can see where this is going. This gets us to the fundamental question about liberalism in general. When will enough regulation be enough? Will there ever come a point where liberals believe that there is simply enough government regulation in place and that they should stop making new laws? Is there a point where citizens are going to be allowed to exercise individual responsibility to the point that they are responsible for their own lives? From the federal government all the way down to local towns and counties, what one describes as freedom in America is rapidly shrinking.

The thing that liberals never seem to get is that the unknown factor in their plans for universal perfection (read equal outcomes) is the fact that it includes humans. There is nothing that humans have ever been involved in that is perfect, that is 100% successful or 100% safe. Yet liberals continue to push the envelope. And it’s not just about safety… it’s gotten to the point that New York City’s Department of Education believes it’s the government’s job to save people from getting their feelings hurt so they’ve put out a list of 50 topics that should not be used in tests because they might offend various people. Dinosaurs are on the list, presumably because it would offend people who don’t believe in evolution. Computers in the home cannot be mentioned (because not all kids will have computers in their homes) but mentioning a computer in a school environment is allowed.

Is there some point of minutia that is beyond the reach of liberals? John Stossel did a special recently called “Illegal Everything” about regulation and featured children from around the country being stopped from selling lemonade. In one case, in Midway, GA, one of the little girls’ father went to city hall to find out what law the girls had broken. No one knew, but the Chief of Police was clear about why they had to be stopped: We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, or what the lemonade was made with.

In the spirit of the times, I would like to suggest a new regulation. All men should be required to get a federal dating permit in order to strike up a conversation with a women in a bar or at the supermarket. Certainly some men lie about all sorts of things in order to get a woman into bed. From their jobs (or lack thereof) their salaries, their previous relationships, their education and even their marital status. Women across the country would be saved from ever getting their hearts broken or their purity despoiled. Licenses would be $25 per year and would have to be shown within the first 5 minutes of any intended coupling. The woman could scan the license with her smartphone and immediately know everything about her would be suitor.

Such as system would open a Pandora’s box of issues. What happens when a man changes jobs? How long does he have to update his license? What happens if he gets a raise? A cut in pay? Who decides if a previous relationship ended amicably, the man or the ex? Does she have the right or obligation to comment on the issuance of his license? How would a government computer weigh an acceptable honesty score? Does lying to your girlfriend about how beautiful your last girlfriend was generate enough positive points to outweigh the truth you told her about how bad her cooking is? Is there even a remote possibility that this could somehow make dating a better experience?

This may sound farfetched, but that’s what happens when government gets involved in practically anything. Education. Healthcare. Housing…

At the end of the day the United States, like every other society throughout history is guaranteed to be imperfect by the fact that it is made up of imperfect humans. Liberals make the mistake that collective decision making and rule making can move the nation farther down the road to perfection. It can’t and it won’t. The strange thing is, the more regulations they foist on the population, the more people become law breakers, inadvertent and otherwise. With over 100,000 federal regulations and literally millions of state and local ordinances it’s virtually impossible that individuals can go through any day without breaking some laws. With so many regulations, virtually everything is illegal, and it’s simply the whim of the regulators, politicians and police that decides who gets prosecuted and for what.

ObamaCare is the single most important court case in a century for one simple reason. It presents the American people with the clearest choice between freedom and statism since the calamitous 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn.

If the Supreme Court throws out the individual mandate and the rest of ObamaCare, perhaps citizens will finally feel like they have a fighting chance in taking on the borg that government has become and begin the process of rolling back the overreach that permeates every area of our lives.

On the other hand, if the Court upholds ObamaCare then it is the swan song of freedom as you know it. The United States will not collapse the next day or the next week or even within the next few years. It will however happen. Power corrupts absolutely and absolute power corrupts even more… A government bestowed with carte blanche will see no reason to ever curb its own power, and eventually it will take over everything. Lemonade anyone?