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For Obama, Believing is Seeing
Townhall.com ^ | August 24, 2008 | George Will

Posted on 08/24/2008 4:21:19 AM PDT by Kaslin

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama has made his economic thinking excruciatingly clear, so it also is clear that his running mate should have been not Joe Biden, but Rumpelstiltskin. He spun straw into gold, a skill an Obama administration will need in order to fulfill its fairy-tale promises.

Obama recently said he would "require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term -- more than double what we have now." Note the verb "require" and the adjective "renewable."

By 2012 he would "require" the economy's huge energy sector to -- here things become comic -- supply half as much energy from renewable sources as already is being supplied by just one potentially renewable source. About 20 percent of America's energy comes from nuclear energy produced using fuel rods, which, when spent, can be reprocessed into fresh fuel.

Obama is (this is part of liberalism's catechism) leery of nuclear power. He also says -- and might say so even if Nevada were not a swing state -- he distrusts the safety of Nevada's Yucca Mountain for storage of radioactive waste. Evidently he prefers today's situation -- nuclear waste stored at 126 inherently insecure above-ground sites in 39 states, within 75 miles of where more than 161 million Americans live.

But back to requiring this or that quota of energy from renewable sources. What will that involve? For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing. Obama seems to believe that if a particular outcome is desirable, one can see how to require it. But how does that work? Details to follow, sometime after noon, Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama has also promised that "we will get 1 million 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years." What a tranquilizing verb "get" is. This senator, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, is going to get a huge, complex industry to produce, and is going to get a million consumers to buy, these cars. How? Almost certainly by federal financial incentives for both -- billions of dollars of tax subsidies for automakers, and billions more to bribe customers to buy these cars they otherwise would spurn.

Conservatives are sometimes justly accused of ascribing magic powers to money and markets: Increase the monetary demand for anything and the supply of it will expand. But it is liberals like Obama who think that any new technological marvel or other social delight can be summoned into existence by a sufficient appropriation. Once they thought "model cities" could be, too.

Where will the electricity for these million cars come from? Not nuclear power (see above). And not anywhere else, if Obama means this: "I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming -- an 80 percent reduction by 2050."

No he won't. Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute notes that in 2050 there will be 420 million Americans -- 40 million more households. So Obama's cap would require reducing per capita carbon emissions to levels probably below even those "in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood."

Regarding taxes, Obama says "we don't want to return to marginal rates of 60 or 70 percent." The top federal rate was 70 percent until the Reagan cuts of 1981. It has since ranged between 50 in 1982 and today's 35. Obama promises that expiration of the Bush tax cuts will restore the 39.6 rate. He also favors a payroll tax of up to 4 percent on earnings above $250,000 (today, only the first $102,000 is taxed), most of which also are subject to the highest state income tax rates. When the top federal rate was set at 28 under Reagan, payroll taxes were not levied on income over $42,000, so the top effective rate of combined taxes was under 35. Obama's policies would bring it to the mid-50s for many Americans, close to the 60 percent Obama considers excessive.

There never is a shortage of nonsensical political rhetoric, but really: Has there ever been solemn silliness comparable to today's politicians tarting up their agendas as things designed for, and necessary to, "saving the planet," and promising edicts to "require" entire industries to reorder themselves?

In 1996, Bob Dole, citing the Clinton campaign's scabrous fundraising, exclaimed: "Where's the outrage?" This year's campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?


TOPICS: Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: economicpolicy; energy; energyplan; energypolicy; obama; taxes

1 posted on 08/24/2008 4:21:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
Obama has also promised that "we will get 1 million 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years."

Here's his template...


2 posted on 08/24/2008 4:37:02 AM PDT by johnny7 ("Duck I says... ")
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To: Kaslin

See my tagline.


3 posted on 08/24/2008 4:37:12 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("The first duty of intelligent men of our day is the restatement of the obvious. " - George Orwell)
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To: Kaslin
Obama has also promised that "we will get 1 million 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years." What a tranquilizing verb "get" is. This senator, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, is going to get a huge, complex industry to produce, and is going to get a million consumers to buy, these cars.

Obama managed to screw up sending a text message announcing his VP choice, but he's got all the answers.

"And you want to be my latex salesman!"

4 posted on 08/24/2008 4:40:22 AM PDT by 6SJ7
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Good tagline and very fitting for the editorial


5 posted on 08/24/2008 4:44:25 AM PDT by Kaslin (Vote Democrat if you like high gas prices at the pump)
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To: Kaslin

The sad thing is that Obama is pretty much a typical Democrat, indeed a typical politician, including many Republicans. They think, gee, just pass a law and it’ll happen. If they even think of the costs, they just pass them on to others. They don’t want to raise taxes to pay for the cost of their requirements.


6 posted on 08/24/2008 5:00:43 AM PDT by Jabba the Nutt (We're all Georgians now, Lili-Putin!)
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To: Kaslin; Fred Nerks; george76; Beckwith; forkinsocket; Calpernia; F15Eagle
This year's campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The one thing that the Democrats have been able to accomplish is to invoke a sense of desperation in their traditional electoral support.This ups the ante, and makes derisive laughter a faux pas in the soicial interaction between Americans. As a society, we need to get over the "faux pas" feeling and make the derisive laughter happen to become a generally accepted social convention among Americans.

Most Obama supporters are one cookie short of a dozen, one or two cards short of a deck.Actually they have become quite whacko. They have become in their turn , convinced that the planet is disintegrating, that human beings are an infestation and plague on the face of the earth, abortion is de rigour,threatened species of flora and fauna are more important than human life, military Islamofascism requires only negotiation and kindness, the nation needs no borders,oil is not an energy resource but the wind and sun are, guns are evil as is the 2nd amendment which was never meant for modern times,the successful surge never happened in Iraq,Islamofascists are revolutionaries like leftist democrats not fascists,the economy is about to destroy itself, and that a redistribution of wealth through 70% taxes or confiscation of assets is necessary to right all wrongs present and historical as arbitrarily defined by political ideologues who falsely proclaim an Orwellian Utopia.

The remaining question is simply, will this accomplishment of creating a desperate electorate move the Democrats and their electorate towards even more strident emotionalism, towards the inevitable result of this liberal socialism becoming a full blown fascist movement? We must stop them. No one else will.

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George Will is absolutely correct. Derisive laughter and ridicule is the strongest method to use in the defeat of this Democrat leftist socialist movement, which is dependent on political cult figures, as Obama has managed to create for himself using the traditional fascist methods which include playing the race card. If we do not, then the gun will become the only alternative. Obama means to divide and conquer America and create a culturally balkanized US society, from Melting Pot to Mosaic, in the way of liberal Canada and its whacko liberal meanderings which nearly destroyed it.The world cannot stand its foremost military power to go all woggly. If so, world war will result, and we in the middle of it.

Jonah Goldberg in his recently published work, " Liberal Fascism" has given us fair warning.

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Let the derisive laughter flow, and let no stone remain unturned in ridiculing this Democrat movement towards fascism. Abandon and deride the ideologue Democrat politicians such as Pelosi and her Senatorial running dog Harry Reid, who have devolved the Congressional House into a debating society of philosophs unable to cope with the nuances of reality, which has for the first time in its history , a public approval rating of 9%.

Yes. Laugh the idiots out of office into the obscurity and infamy that they have earned, and let us go on to preserve , promote and protect the traditional values of the American way of life.Our continued freedom and the progress of a peaceful international world demands it.

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7 posted on 08/24/2008 5:22:33 AM PDT by Candor7 (Fascism? All it takes is for good men to say nothing, (Ridicule Obama))
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To: johnny7
He's already clued us in to his love of central planning...


8 posted on 08/24/2008 5:27:47 AM PDT by COBOL2Java ("It's not my fault if McCain loses - it's his own damn fault!" - Mark Levin)
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To: COBOL2Java
He's already clued us in to his love of central planning...

LOL... water to power our cars and snow to heat our homes!

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9 posted on 08/24/2008 5:47:23 AM PDT by johnny7 ("Duck I says... ")
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To: Candor7
Laughter can get rid of ideologies like evolutionism or the KKK but the demokkkrat party is another question.

The thing which scares me about them is the sort of effort they can put up even when they have absolutely nothing to offer anybody, even when their candidates are such total losers that EVERYBODY can see it including them, even when voting dem is roughly equivalent to committing suicide.

The dem party is not about ideas; it's about demographics, racism, hatred, class envy, and machine politics.

Other than that, if there IS any sort of a way to laugh them into oblivion, it has to involve the weather and the coming little ice age which one would predict from the current lack of sunspots. THAT should be on televison 24/7. This has been the coldest summer I've ever seen in the mid Atlantic region. We've had three weeks worth of hot days this year and even on those days it take four or five hours to get hot and it doesn't STAY hot after 7 PM. The last time anybody ever went more than a month and a half without seeing sunspots was in the 1600s just before the little ice age, and it's now been since January.

10 posted on 08/24/2008 6:40:49 AM PDT by wendy1946
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To: johnny7

First I would like to hear Obama’s definition of “150 mile per gallon plug in hybrids”. If it plugs in and has no onboard engine and generator it is not a hybrid, even though the current vogue is to call it a hybrid. If it has both plug in charging and an onboard generator it is a plug in hybrid but there is another question. How in blazes would you measure miles per gallon on any vehicle that is being plugged in for charging? Gallons used in the onboard engine for generating electricity would be meaningless as it would depend on how much charging is done by the plug-in method. Spray words in all directions Obambi, who cares whether they mean anything!


11 posted on 08/24/2008 7:30:54 AM PDT by RipSawyer (What's black and white and red all over? Barack Hussein Obama)
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To: wendy1946

Wendy, you should read this post if you havn’t already.

Its MONSOON weather.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2067065/posts


12 posted on 08/24/2008 7:33:25 AM PDT by Candor7 (Fascism? All it takes is for good men to say nothing, (Ridicule Obama))
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To: Kaslin
Where will the electricity for these million cars come from? Not nuclear power (see above). And not anywhere else, if Obama means this: "I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming -- an 80 percent reduction by 2050."

We are quickly becoming painted into a corner by the combination of anti-nuke and anti-carbon activists.

When an animal is cornered, he is dangerous. I see the world governments cornering the populace with these energy and environmental games they are playing. Worldwide revolutions will be the result.

We need to stop this madness while there is still a chance.

13 posted on 08/24/2008 8:01:00 AM PDT by SteamShovel (Global Warming, the New Patriotism)
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To: Kaslin
Once they thought "model cities" could be, too.

They still believe this. AGW is their latest attempt to force these utopian socialist communal cities on all of us.

14 posted on 08/24/2008 8:04:22 AM PDT by SteamShovel (Global Warming, the New Patriotism)
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To: Kaslin
Hope, Change, Yes we can!, and the author interrupts with a question like Where will the electricity for these million cars come from?

Wind turbines on the roof of cars or course, the technology has been proven powering babies.

I thought everyone knew about this.

15 posted on 08/24/2008 8:07:31 AM PDT by SJackson (as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, Michelle O)
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To: Candor7

Is It Time To Elect A President Who Appreciates Communism?

http://townhall.com/columnists/AustinHill/2008/08/24/is_it_time_to_elect_a_president_who_appreciates_communism


16 posted on 08/24/2008 10:20:08 AM PDT by roses of sharon ((Who sent Barack Hussein Obama?))
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