I think this is a real hoot. Self-snarking funny.

Gilded Class Warriors
Liberal grandees attack the rich while enjoying their lifestyle.
By Victor Davis Hanson | National Review

In his first term, President Obama was criticized for trash-talking the 1-percenters while enjoying the aristocracy of Martha’s Vineyard and the nation’s most exclusive golf courses . .

Before we get too far, let’s just cut to Hanson’s chase. The President is a big fat hypocrite. What’s more Obama’s insincerity has spread throughout the left like a wildfire, exposing the pro-poverty and heroin-chic crowd for the Park Avenue Set they’d rather be. If you think your Chrysler 300 will score a curbside spot at Le Bernardin, think again. You all should know Stuart Weitzman does not make a rope-sole sandal. (These last bits I added after peeking at what Victor’s obviously thinking.)

The message here is ‘You clearly want to be us. So quit playing games.’

And that’s what’s funny. Because Victor is very clearly confused. It’s bad enough that a President talks about the rich again and again without ever once kissing their asses. That alone whets his suspicion. But added to that, Obama speaks of the wealthy as if they were lucky? Or wielding of power? Or imbued with societal responsibilities? These things are simply not done. There is but one truth to be discussed publicly of fat cats and it is this: Me Too Please!

Obama knows this and what a liar:

Obama never quite squared his accusations that “millionaires and billionaires” had not paid their fair share with his own obvious enjoyment of the perks of “corporate jet owners,” “fat cat bankers,” and Las Vegas junketeers.

A devastating indictment, don’t you think? Obama never squared his mentioning that the rich pay low taxes with his own eating well and flying comfortably. This class of hypocrisy would kill a decent man.

Of course Obama is rich, tells everybody he’s rich, pays low taxes, and tells everybody he pays low taxes. Because it’s true. And now he’d like to pay more taxes, and he wants his fellow lucky ducks to do the same. This is an obvious deceit, of some Machiavellian stripe. For Hanson’s part, he will toss the government a few extra bucks after Obama goes bankrupt and lives in a cardboard box for the rest of his life. Fair is fair, after all.

Now, that paradox has continued right off the bat in the second term. In the State of the Union, Obama once more went after “the few” and “the wealthiest and the most powerful,” whom he blasted as the “well-off and the well-connected” and the “billionaires with high-powered accountants.”

Let’s get straight to the President’s dishonesty: The rich politician “once more went after” his rich neighbors with insults. “The few.” Which is true. “The wealthiest.” That’s true. “The most powerful.” True. “Well-off.” True. “Well connected.” True. “Billionaires.” True. “With high-powered accountants.” True. The word impeachment fails the development.

Obama frankly described the wealthiest among us in complimentary terms, and Hanson is galled by the attack. If the President had uttered something like “blue-blood,” Victor and his pals would have had to storm an armory to restore the Rockefellers’ reputation. They’re a defenseless bunch and Victor’s nearly a martyr, and whaddyaknow he happens to be landed and wealthy himself.

He also deigns it his responsibility to speak freely of American groups and classes, but he rarely picks nits in the mirror. He draws on a litany (here, here, here) of foul and derisive stereotypes to describe the poors and the ethnics, but we assume that’s all they really are, right? Certainly. Still, it would be wise of you to refrain from mentioning David Koch is “well connected” lest Victor unload both barrels of his class-warfare gun…

Like clockwork, the president then jetted to West Palm Beach for yet another golfing vacation at one of the nation’s priciest courses . .

…while the President, who’s rich, is rich.

The guys who run Politico have posted some golly-gosh on the President who, you may have noticed, is not stupid. They call it “Obama, the puppet master.” Also “Behind the Curtain: Obama, the puppet master.” This Curtain must be some big deal. Anyway it turns out Obama is neither a fool nor is he pulling anyone’s strings.

. . the mastery mostly flows from a White House that has taken old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting). And it’s an equal opportunity strategy: Media across the ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access.

So this “puppet master.” He’s on Facebook?

With more technology, and fewer resources at many media companies, the balance of power between the White House and press has tipped unmistakably toward the government. This is an arguably dangerous development, and one that the Obama White House — fluent in digital media and no fan of the mainstream press — has exploited cleverly and ruthlessly.

Yes it’s all about how ruthless the Twitter can be, at least in the hands of Obama. You can see how “arguably dangerous” this is becoming.

February of 2011 the President sits down for an interview with Fox News. Bill O’Reilly interrupts him 48 times. June 2012 Obama meets with reporters in the Rose Garden to announce changes in illegal immigration policy. The Daily Caller’s Neil Munro shouts him down. Days ago at the National Prayer Breakfast, Ben Carson rants a lengthy tirade on the perfect glories of God, the Flat Tax and zombie Health Savings Accounts while Obama sits 5 feet away.

And this barely covers the insults the President has had hurled in his face. Which is to say that these media events have long since devolved into punk journalism, or skree-discussions. Taking direct shots at the President is a thing now.

In all these cases, self-serving people seized the opportunity for personal advancement. O’Reilly saw he could solidify his ‘Fuck You Pal’ bona fides. Munro was an invisible dolt at a doltery, but now we know who he is. Ben Carson is quitting his practice to run for President, and Politico dutifully publishes stories about him every day. If you think the President owes these people their fondest wishes, you’re crazy. Journalism has become the practice of masturbation. When the media become respectable, which likely will be never again, the President will, maybe, talk to them.

When you’re a God-fearing black man you’re allowed to say whatever you like.

The modern day Sambos and Quimbos fall under two categories They are the poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who may have begun on the proper path but have since been co-opted by racist liberal Democrats . .

‘Sambo’ Jackson and ‘Quimbo’ Sharpton.

And you have the just plain stupid Black leaders who have been selectively bred to drink the Kool-Aid with an insatiable thirst, despite the glaring evidence of the devastating toll that liberal policies have wreaked upon Black America . .

President Dumbshit was bred to destroy his people.

They are the triumph of the changed Southern Democrat strategy adopted after realizing they couldn’t win with fire hoses, attack dogs and the hangman’s noose.

Once the Republicans stopped Al Gore Sr. lynching the Negroes, Junior sent the suckers to college. Will a mister Clayton Bigsby please proceed to the courtesy phone . .

What color are the ginger ponies in your world?

John Boehner looks bad, though to many in Washington he’s a sympathetic figure because they know how much he wanted a historic agreement on the great issue of his time. Some say he would have been happy to crown his career with it, and if that meant losing a job, well, a short-term loss is worth a long-term crown. Mr. Obama couldn’t even make a deal with a man like that, even when it would have made the president look good.

Johnny twied, but Bawack was mean. Aww. Let someone remind Peggers that the Speaker walked away from bargaining in order to accessorize his ‘Plan B’ truncheon with poison spikes and accordingly wave it at the President. The bill raised the highest tax threshold to a million dollars, threw the estate taxes back to the Bush era, and retained the miniscule rates on dividends and capital gains. Meanwhile it let expire the Child Tax and American Opportunity Tax Credits. Net result: Millionaires got a $118,000 tax break, the working poor got a $1,000 tax increase.

It was everything a Republican guerrilla could want. And Boehner’s people pissed on it. Had any survived, a single ‘Plan B’ provision would have caused the President to veto whatever bill came his way. But Boehner couldn’t get his own terrorists to carry the dynamite. The legislation wasn’t bad enough. Not nearly destructive enough. Though it favored the rich over the poor by hundreds of billions of dollars, it was too liberal. Give us something really despicable, they said, something we can get behind. The Speaker quickly adjourned the House and flew home. Oh Peggy the President has lost his mind.

Conservatives can whine all they want about the fiscal cliff. What if tax rates went up all of 3% on the richest people in the world? Dear Buddha! Given how high income taxes are already, I assume America would be promptly destroyed.

But the truth? HIGH TAXES DON”T EXIST IN AMERICA. If anyone says anything other than that, they’re either misinformed or lying. Probably both. Watch:

Tax Burden for Most Americans Is Lower Than in the 1980s
New York Times | BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and ROBERT GEBELOFF

. . in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

It’s true. Republicans have been obsessed with tax-cutting for those 30 years and so the tax code reflects it. You’d have to go back to the twenties, I’d bet, to see taxes on Americans this low. Not that the actual truth matters — you can never cut taxes enough for conservatives to be happy. This is the only truth that matters, and this is a behavior that must be protected at all costs.

Here comes Bryan Preston to do his part:

The New York Times Isn’t Called the Old Grey Liar for Nothing
PJ TATLER | November 30, 2012

. . The Times then pulls some hacky sleight of hand that will only fool liberals, using 1980 as its banner year. The obvious implication is that the current economy could do with higher taxes, which just happens to be the Democratic Party’s position in the fiscal cliff negotiations. The other obvious implication is that if higher tax rates were good enough for the man most identified with 1980, Ronald Reagan, well then they should be good enough for John Boehner et al.

The obvious problem with the Times’ second obvious implication: Those high 1980 tax rates and their drag on the economy helped elect Reagan. He started cutting taxes after his inauguration, which was in 1981. And the economy grew enormously. That growth undercuts the Times’ first implication.

Preston: Nice try liberals. It was after 1980 that Reagan slashed taxes and the economy boomed. Like you have the guts of Ronald Reagan, losers. Game, set, screw you. And here comes Romney’s economics adviser, Greg Mankiw of Harvard, to second that:

Over my coffee this morning, I read the following headline on the front page of The New York Times: “Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than in the Reagan ’80s.” Below it was a graphic comparing average tax rates for various income groups in 1980 and 2010.

The problem is that Reagan did not become president until January 1981, and his tax policy was not fully implemented until a couple of years later (and arguably not until his second term, when we got very significant tax reform). So the headline should have read, “Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than in Carter’s 1980.” That makes the story very different, as 1980 was the year the incumbent Carter was defeated by the challenger Reagan, who was proposing significant tax reduction as a key part of his campaign.

You will notice that neither one of them bothers with numbers to back up their claims. Considering how enamored with facts and numbers the Romney clan were, are you surprised? The truth is that Reagan can’t hold a candle to Barack “Tax Slasher” Obama. Using the wingnuts’ own taxfoundation.org breakdown of historical tax brackets relative to income (in inflation-adjusted dollars, of course), here are the tax facts:

Reagan’s income tax rates from 1983 or 1987 can’t touch Obama’s today. Once you factor in payroll tax rates (Social Security and Medicare), it gets even WORSE:

If Reagan is their tax-killing hero, what is Barack Obama? Jumpin’ GOP Christ? Except for one measly year (1988, where the rate for millionaires and billionaires bottomed out at 28%[!]), Ronnie can’t compare to Obama and that’s that. Period. Considering the chronically miserable fiscal state we’ve been in, this should end forever any argument that low taxes do the economy much, if any, good.

He means to swallow socialism. Mickie Fishmouth over at Sinecure Kings, Inc., declares war. On you. Give up now or expect an ass-kicking to follow.

And to make good on the threat, the Heritage Foundation filmed the guy’s bottom teeth. Mr. Michael Needham, in the role of the spokes-man(?), thrusts his twitching jut-jaw to scare the anchovy out of you.

The fish-face must then be an expression of rugged individuality. Like John Wayne’s celluloid amble. Mr. Limpet looked just like a gunfighter. Cherokee Indians swooned at the sight of Charlie Tuna.

You might think more about this, but then comes: ‘Wait, am I safe here? Am I wearing any Eau de Krill?’ And then the inevitable: ‘This video stinks.’ Highlights:

The squishing of the mouth, the darting of the tongue, and the swallowing hard between declarations of hostilities are also normal behavior. You take this Needham to a shrimp buffet and it’ll kill him.

“But the president, he succeeded by suppressing the vote. By saying to people, ‘You may not like who I am and I know you can’t bring yourself to vote for me, but I’m going to paint this other guy as simply a rich guy who only cares about himself.”

“President Obama has been re-elected with the, becoming the first president in history to win a second term with a smaller percentage of the vote than he did in his first term . .”

Karl Rove’s hand-puppet George W. Bush lost the vote in his first term. So if he won a re-election, he’d have to get more votes. So what’s Karl’s point?

His point is nothing. He’s just making noise. He’s an idiot.

If you give me a million dollars, I will buy you something of value. I will get you a building. And you can live in it. You can locate a company in it. You can house Syrian refugees in it. Then you can clean and sweep it and sell it to someone else.

If you give Karl Rove 200 million dollars, he will hand it to television broadcasters. And they will build the biggest bonfire you ever saw.

Feminist activist and sometime editor at National Review Rich Lowry fully wondered if he’d have to burn his laminated Nineteenth Amendment card. Then he figured he could make his disgust with Barack Obama public by other means. With “The President’s Insulting Campaign,” I think he’s gotten Gloria Steinem’s attention, among others:

It is a mercy that the suffragettes aren’t around to see President Barack Obama’s campaign for the women’s vote. It would make them weep in dismay.

Elizabeth “Cotton Candy” Cady Stanton famously wept whenever men were boors. Incarnated nowadays, doubtless she’d drown herself. So it’s a good thing she kicked around in a more respectful era, female-wise. God knows where all the suffragettes would have ended up if presidents had brutishly pandered to their whims this way, probably hauling rickshaws in America’s chinatowns. The Lilly Ledbetter act also enslaves employers and more but there’s no time as Rich is off to the equal pay march.

The former uniter is now a divider hoping enough women buy his insipid pitch. Let’s be glad that Susan B. Anthony and the gals are spared the spectacle.

We hope the gals are dead or at least good sports.

Mitt Romney is a deceptive man. And he’s running an election campaign on bullshit. For his latest serving of horse’s toes, the local auto workers were surely appreciative:

DEFIANCE, Ohio — Mitt Romney attacked his opponent, President Obama, in this rural and manufacturing city, on education and trade, passing along a report that Chrysler might move all of its Jeep manufacturing to China, which the company has denied.

“I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair,” Mr. Romney said.

One thing you can count on. Rank lying, okay, two things. Chrysler employees didn’t mind it being “owned by the Italians.” If it weren’t for the swarthies, their jobs wouldn’t exist. As for Romney telling Jeep workers they’d be canned tomorrow, or the day after, Chrysler didn’t thank the Governor.

There are times when the reading of a newswire report generates storms originated by a biased or predisposed approach . .

Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China . . A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.

Accusing a Mormon elder of extravagance would normally be a proper shaming. But Mitt’s naked ambition far outweighs his conscience. Now there’s this:

“Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy. And sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job. I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.”

You can remind him he wrote the famous op-ed “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”, but his campaign now depends upon Ohio. So he’s got to be the opposite of his actual self. Therefore, he’s worried about the auto industry. He’s been sitting at home, hugging his knees and rocking back and forth. Someone has to fight for your jobs, dammit. Somebody has got to care. I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this mythology.

It’s shocking to see a grown man operating blithely as a living breathing lie. The only satisfaction you can take from this farce is the instant karma delivered Mittens via the unconscionable celebrity of Meat Loaf. The humble candidate got yearrgghhed by Mr. Loaf like he’d been possessed by demon honesty. And this season’s best campaign highlight was born:

10 days left. Smart sophisticated people look at the polls and think smart thoughts:

So here’s a prospect worth contemplating: What if Romney carries the popular vote, but Obama regains the presidency by winning 270 votes or more in the electoral college?

“I think it’s a 50/50 possibility — or more,” said Mark McKinnon, who was a political strategist for President George W. Bush.

“If the election were held tomorrow, it wouldn’t just be a possibility, it would be actual,” added William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution . .

Oh the clownery visited upon us occasionally by the electoral college. The Founding Fathers may have been funnier than how they were painted. But this, no, is not another one of those ‘excelsior the popular vote’ posts. This is cleverer than that. This is the Washington Post:

No incumbent president seeking a second term has ever won the electoral college and lost the popular vote.

Every modern president to be reelected — Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush — has gotten a bigger share of the vote in their second bid for office than their first, and with it, a chance to claim a mandate.

A win in the electoral college that is not accompanied by one in the popular vote casts a shadow over the president and his ability to govern.

Remember how George W. Bush was hamstrung by this issue in 2001? Lost to Al Gore, won the office? Dead on arrival, he was. No I don’t remember that. So it is that incumbents only can zombify our politics. Incidentally, this has never happened before so it’s a fairly sure thing.

Gosh and golly smart people. I wish Karen Tumulty had been less cerebrum-riot-y and more look-at-the-country-y when she’d written this. There’s a bigger issue pointed out by the tight polling. All anyone had to do to see it was look at the politics clearinghouse site Memeorandum today. Here is a story by the AP:

Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not . .

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell . .

The AP surveys were conducted with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Michigan and NORC at the University of Chicago.

Americans are more racist now than they were in 2008. Hooray! No wonder President Spearchucker can’t kill the hapless Romneybot (*click-clack* nothing can kill Romneybot *whirr* only Romneybot can kill Romneybot *click*). The polls are this close because half of the country is insane. Responding to Romney spokesman John Sununu, who accused General Colin Powell (blah person) of being Afro-racist, here’s Larry Wilkerson in an interview with Ed Schultz:

My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people — not all of them, but most of them — who are still basing their positions on race.

Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as Commander in Chief and President, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that’s despicable.

That’s Republican Colonel Larry Wilkerson, on the Republicans. Those jerks are voting more vigorously against the Black Candidate than they are for the Man Who Stood For (insert here). Mitt would win their votes as a hologram as long as he was programmed Navajo white. And then this, the creme de la ruses:

It’s the birth of Barack Obama! Probably the pranksters should not have casted Big Jim Slade in the starring role, probably. But there are explanations. We know this because someone asked:

–Well, that baby is massive. It looks like it’s at least a year old.

Babies are born heavy all the time. I see no issue with that. And I assure you, most of the general public has no idea how big infants are in Kenya.

–What?

You might think the US is a fat society, but in Kenya they are born big and then they become light. Which is evidenced by the fact that today, Obama is really light and fit. That’s just the way it is.

That makes sense. Now if he could tell us why the tad Obama keeps flicking cigarette ashes from his beard. We wonder. Why he’s wearing a houndstooth jacket and a fez, reading Kerouac and slugging a bottle of absinthe, we’re curious to know. If the fool over there—> hadn’t blown the con with his multiple production tells, he’d probably have had a million people in the streets calling for grown Obama’s resignation. Does anyone doubt that?

And it’s not like the rural rubes are the only trogs. The congressional Republicans have repeatedly called him a communist and Marxist and terrorist and death on two legs. Have opposed every proposal he brought to the table, particularly if they themselves proposed it first. Screamed “You lie!” while he tried to speak to them. Filibustered the legislation he supported more than three hundred sixty times, a record. They don’t like him? They’d like to abolish even the memory of an Obama.

Karen Tumulty should open her eyes. It’s very neat and swell to opine about a hobbled presidency on the horizon. But this one was dented by racism from the start. With polling in the swing states currently running in the President’s favor, it brings up the likelihood that Obama will win. Hence the trolls will gnash their fangs, and they’ll jam a burning cross in the wheels of Congress, again, and clever Karen will say “I told you so.”

PIERS MORGAN: Colin Powell has decided to opt for President Obama again despite apparently still being a Republican. Is it time he left the party, do you think?

JOHN SUNUNU: . . frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or whether he’s got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama.

Sununu points out that we have only Powell’s endorsement to consider, which is unfair. John thinks we might ignore his decision and turn our attention elsewhere. We might consider Colin Powell himself. I mean, who is this guy anyway? If we all had a photograph of him, or a charcoal sketch, we could “take a look at” the guy. Maybe then we would learn something.

MORGAN: What reason would that be?

SUNUNU: Well, I think that when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being President of the United States — I applaud Colin for standing with him.

He’s like the President in being of a rare and different race. That’s why the General isn’t interested in foreign policy or the war in Afghanistan. He’s unconcerned with the complexities of politics and such. Can you blame him? Of course not. Like Governor Sununu, I only applaud Colin Powell for his racism. It’s okay, black people are like that.

These people are insane.

I won’t hear what I’d like to hear at the presidential foreign policy debate Monday.

Writes Roger Simon. Won’t hear? What? Do tell!

What I’d like to hear is Barack Obama resigning over Benghazi, the most extreme public mishandling of an attack on American personnel ever, certainly in my lifetime.

Ahem. Testing. It’s lovely to be here at the campus of Lynn University in stunning Boca Raton, Florida, I quit. OR Thank You, Governor. Thank You, Bob. I sit here before you not-president as of, mmm, 10:30 this morning (I took the bus). MAYBE I would like to say, before I get to my opening remarks on the administration’s long-range strategy of mitigating Israeli-Palestinian violence through negotiated land swaps recognizing a limited Right of Return, I will resign at intermission. There’s an intermission, right? How’s everybody tonight?