Barack Obama – Pilot's Operating Handbook for Life

A little bit of respect

I’ve been more than a little dismayed at the venom directed at President Obama over his planned address to school children on Tuesday. Whether you agree with everything he stands for or not, it seems pretty strange to me that there is so much objection to the President of the United States telling kids to work hard and stay in school. I mean from everything I’ve seen, it looks like the script could have just as easily been written by Laura Bush (and I doubt if anyone at Fox News would have been upset with her telling kids to stay in school). Anyway, as I was preparing to write this, I read Bob Cornwall’s post that says much of what I wanted to say and says it better, so go read it there, especially this sentence, “Even if we don’t like the holder of the office, we need to respect the office or we will find ourselves in deep trouble.” Oh, and here’s another one that makes the point pretty well. I think that is one of the things that has been bothering me the most. Disagree on policy, okay, but even when I haven’t particularly cared for the person, I’ve tried to respect the office. These nutjobs praying for the death of the President of the United States have gotten way out of line and I’m dismayed that more conservatives have allowed that to go unchallenged. Okay, end of political rant for the day. I hope anyone out there reading this is having a great Labor Day weekend.

Shalom,
Jim

The true impact of McCain/Obama on personal income tax

By now, you’ve no doubt seen the ads by the McCain campaign stating that if Obama is elected your taxes are going to go up. It turns out, the Washington Post analyzed the tax plans of the 2 campaigns back in June and your taxes will indeed go up if you make over $603,403/year. For those making less than $111,000 you’ll get a bigger tax break under Obama, from $111,000 to $226,000 about the same and from $226,000 to $603,000 you won’t see any significant change in your taxes. [start_sarcasm]Yeah, that’s going to really hurt the middle class. Oh, wait, the middle class goes up to $5,000,000/year, right?[end_sarcasm] I have to admit, I didn’t notice this story at the time, but Fred Anderson took note of it here (though he also got it elsewhere). Oh, and you remember those temporary tax cuts in 2000 (2001?)? That’s where the increases come from, we just go back to where the tax rates on the top end of the scale were during the boom times of the late 90s. They were a real drag on the economy, right? I love the graphic, so I’m including it here, too.

That kind of reminds me of another graphic that Fred found that I thought was amusing (and unfortunately too true).

Bill Moyers gets it

I found this link on Kent Siladi’s blog. I’ve always admired Bill Moyers and in this clip he says a lot of what I’ve been thinking about this whole Jeremiah Wright/Barack Obama “controversy”. Note, it is almost 6.5 minutes long and I think some of the most important parts are in the last half.