Charlie Gibson asked a great question at the Democratic debate. He asked both candidates how they would deal with the current 15% rate on capital gains understanding that every time since the 80s (and I think this extends back further) that the rate has been CUT the revenue to the Government has INCREASED, while increasing it has LOWERED revenues. Senator Clinton was at least wise enough to understand that she could go UP to where her husband LOWERED it to, 20%, and she hopes, not have too great an impact on the economy. Obama, overt socialist liberal that he is, could not resist the attempt to imply that while history SO FAR was that letting the private sector reinvest its profits MIGHT lead to growth in the economy and hence revenue one certainly could not be sure that was ALWAYS the case and therefore he would not say he would not raise the capital gains tax higher than 20%. His opinion was that this was an issue of fairness, not economics, and that it was his job to level the playing field. Lenin and Trotsky would be proud.

Taxes redux on the ‘middle class tax cut’. For Hillary the middle class tax cut would be folks under 250K. Obama started at 75 but Charles gave him an out and he agreed (I’d like to hear his answer again) to 250-275K. The following weekend, at a town hall meeting, he was back to 50-75K. If you are making more than 50-75K then Obama needs your hard earned money to pay for ‘affordable’ housing (from the same townhall meeting). That means housing provided by the government at your expense. And our free market system should not provide that housing, it should be provided by the government (Obama will establish a politburo to address that). With any luck at all we can soon be living one family (of any size) in government built housing (the American dream) with our needs met by Cuban style healthcare (third world trained doctors in short supply providing very limited access to overburdened facilities) and our political decisions made by ‘super’ delegates who, of course, will not be subjected to such harsh realities since, like Bill Ayers and Angela Davis, they are members of the Elite Left whose struggles to destroy our democratic institutions must be rewarded with tenured professorships from which to rot the minds of our youth-like Barrack perhaps.

Obama thinks the best way to be a good commander in chief is to make sure the military is never in harms way. So we’d get the hell out of the Middle East and God knows where else as quickly as possible so we eliminate any need to meet with disabled veterans or have any opportunity for them to become victims of live fire under his watch. Surely we can negotiate with anyone if we have our allies all in a neat little row. NEVER in the history of the run up to the Iraq war, when EVERY civilized nation knew that Saddam had WMD and would use them as soon as possible, did we ever have the full support of Russia, China, Germany or France. Never in ANY international crisis have all these ‘allies’ agreed on a course of action. Today we might get France but that’s it. The rest of these very powerful UN Security Council dominating nations will do what THEY think is in their own best parochial interests and if that is not in line with what Barack wants than he will quickly get a very harsh lesson in world politics. His naïveté is only exceeded by his incredibly inflated ego. Where Hillary, much to her credit,  is willing to say that if Iran launches on Israel there will be harsh and immediate military response from the U.S., Barrack would ‘Take the necessary actions’ -which could well mean lobbying for more ineffectual sanctions or even inviting the Mullahs to the White House for a confab.

Both of them want to come down hard on ‘Wall Street’ and possibly put a ‘windfall’ tax on the big corporations, especially the oil companies, and put those hard earned tax dollars to work in Government funded programs. Just think for a minute-the government is going to take private sector money and spend it better and smarter than the private sector? If you can buy that nonsense I’ve got bridges to sell. The reality is that these self serving companies will not miss an opportunity to be the first on their block to make the move to the next big energy boom-and they’ll do it better and faster than you can imagine. Crippling these companies with wasteful taxes will surely make the journey to better and more ‘green’ energy sources that much longer.

Social security will be solved by increasing taxes on the ‘wealthy’ according Obama. Hillary would have it that we can form another commission which will raise the retirement age and lower benefits. The real answer is to recognize that there is no ‘trust fund’ and that we have to start now giving younger generations a better option than a government run program that is a constant source of additional funding for pork barrel spending in Congress.

And then there are those pesky issues of character. You see the voters really do want to know who they are putting in office. You can look at a man or woman’s life work and judge them. Such is the case with John McCain. But lacking anything more than a few years of senate service, as is the case with Obama and Hillary, you have to look elsewhere for how to measure their worth. In Obama’s case we are stuck with his associations. If I spent my life hanging around with Sonny Barger and riding with Hell’s Angels it would be really hard for folks to think I was anything but a hell raising, drug dealing motorcycle hoodlum. Obama hangs out with Bill Ayers and his mentor Rev. Wright- the inspiration for his ‘Audacity of Hope’ and a clear America hater and hard core bigot. His excuse for Ayers is that he was 8 years old when Ayres was a bomber, forgetting completely that he is even now unrepentant and wishes he’d done more. By that yardstick, had Adolf Hitler survived WWII and was still alive, it would be OK to hang with him even if he still hates Jews and thinks they should be exterminated. Would you vote for someone who called Adolf a friend? Really? And of course, thinking no one would ever know, he blurted out the truth to his wealthy liberal elitist cronies at a fund raiser in San Francisco; that truth is that there are many American’s in the hinterlands who are bitter about the country’s moving away from their values and who cling to their bibles and guns. But with the right big government giveaway program their votes can be bought and those bibles and guns can be wrested from their cold, big government program silenced hands.

Hillary has very little experience too so again we have to go to associations and things said. The sniper fire deal in Bosnia is a prime example of stretching the truth to meet the immediate need for experience more defined by the desperate need to have any at all then by the its actual existence. Hillary is part of the tired old tax and spend liberal left that, like Obama, ferverently believes in the Marxist mantra of wealth redistribution-‘from each according to his ability and to each according to his need’. Such thought processes fail utterly to realize that the entrepreneurial spirit that been so much a part of our nation’s greatness, and which is so fundamental to its continued success, could not exist but for the knowledge that in making the effort and sacrifice to achieve success one might actually receive some reward for oneself or ones progeny. It’s the most fundamental principle of free enterprise and the one which liberals attack at every opportunity. Why? To gain power and do so by using the hard earned money of those who typify the American experience to buy the votes of those who are less successful.

I’m not sure that McCain has all the right answers, I’d guess more wrong than right, but he is light years better than Hillary or Barrack. Particularly in the area of character.