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Autonation CEO Succumbs To Obama Derangement Syndrome: Says President Is Playing The Class Warfare Card To Divide America Joe Weisenthal Sep. 15, 2010, 8:01 AM Oh hey look! It's another CEO outraged that Obama plans to raise taxes on the rich. This time it's Autonation CEO Mike Jackson who says on CNBC that the President is playing class warfare to divide Americans. Apparently returning tax rates for the richest Americans to where they were prior to Bush -- which actually we don't think is a great idea -- is class warfare. All of these CEOs keep bashing Obama, which is...

OGUNQUIT, Maine – Former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura surprised participants in the third annual “Run for the Fallen” Sunday. Dozens of runners took part in the event to remember the 65 servicemen and women from Maine who have died overseas since 2001. When the run ended, people gathered at Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth for a lobster bake. They were surprised with a visit from former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura. They wanted to thank the runners and organizers for this tribute to the fallen. The Bushes spoke with the families of...

How about them political elites, huh? Five million bucks for Chelsea Clinton's wedding, 15K just to rent the air-conditioned shitters -- huge chrome and glass babies with hot water and everything. No gas masks and waxy little squares of toilet paper for those guys. Yes, it looks big time from the cheap seats. But the truth is that when we are looking at the political elite, we are looking at the dancing monkey, not the organ grinder who calls the tune. Washington's political class is about as upwardly removed from ordinary citizens as the ruling class is from the political...

Imagine you are one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s top political strategists. The polls show your party needs a game-changer, something that will transform what looks like a losing political hand into a winner. “I know,” you shout, “let’s push for a large tax increase on the ‘fortunate few’ — the 2 or 3 percent of the population with so much money they won’t even miss a few thousand bucks. The other 97 or 98 percent will feel no pain, and we’ll be able to call ourselves deficit hawks when all those billions start rolling in.” On paper, this strategy...

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A new UCLA study suggests that disparities in cardiovascular disease risk in the United States are due less to race or ethnicity than to socioeconomic status. In the study, published in the August issue of the journal Annals of Epidemiology, researchers from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and colleagues found that there are large differences in risk by socioeconomic status within racial and ethnic groups — with the poorest individuals having the highest risk — but that there are few differences in risk between racial and ethnic groups. "Most ethnic differences in cardiovascular risk are really due...

Rush Limbaugh recently dedicated a substantial portion of his show to an incredible article by Angelo M. Codevilla in the current American Spectator: America's Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution. (Here's the text of Limbaugh's monologue.) Here's how important I think this article is: It makes me think of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Published in January 1776, Paine's most portentuous work "fixed" in written words (like a fly is "fixed" in amber) a lot of things that people intuitively knew and felt but had never heard boldly stated in clear, plain English. And once the words had been...

Are you ready for the next massive taxpayer bailout? Many of the same lawmakers who infuriated taxpayers by bailing out Wall Street, the auto companies, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently created a new program virtually guaranteed to require bailouts. And unlike those one-time bailouts, this one will become an annual taxpayer expense. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act is a new long-term care insurance program. The concept had floated around Washington for years before Congress inserted it into the Obamacare health law — most likely to provide a $70 billion piggybank that could be raided...

In his recent American Spectator article "America's Ruling Class- and the Perils of Revolution" (July/ August 2010), Professor Angelo Cordevilla observed that most of the voters who identify themselves as Democrats are reasonably satisfied that the Democratic Party represents them well, but only a fourth of the voters who call themselves Republican feel they are well represented by the Republican Party. While the Democrats may voice opposition to their elected leaders on select issues, they are more likely to overcome their stands on individual issues and vote the party line at election time. Many Democrats think their party sold out...

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment...

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment...

FOR MOST of my life, I've been pretty much a "make love, not war" type of North Jersey woman. The very thought of owning, much less firing, a gun was as far from my mind-set as voting for a Republican or rooting for the Boston Red Sox. So why did I enroll in a National Rifle Association basic pistol class? I was pretty disgusted with all of the vitriol spewed last summer by the more extreme right-wing politicians, some of whom urged their supporters to become "armed and dangerous." With all of the shouts from the Tea Party crowd about...

The gorgeous and lovley Ivanka Trump is interviewed on Fox News: She's asked: How do think this President is doing? "I'm fearful for my grandchildren.....America wants to hear about jobs, not anti-business rhetoric"

RNC: Obama playing on 'class warfare and race'April 28, 2010 The Republican National Committee Tuesday night accused President Obama of making "an appeal based on class warfare and race" after Obama outlined his party's midterm strategy of returning people who voted for the first time in 2008 to the polls in November.Obama, in a video released this week, spoke in the demographic terms more commonly -- though very commonly -- used by political consultants, saying Democrats must appeal to "young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again." The Wall Street Journal...

the Congressional Budget Office has released data estimating that by 2016, 3 million Americans earning less than $59,000 a year will face a penalty for not having health insurance. An additional 900,000 earning more than that will also pay the penalty. To be clear, these numbers underestimate the full cost of the mandate. To start with, the estimates don't include those Americans who will decide to purchase insurance in response to the mandate. If somebody otherwise wouldn't choose to purchase insurance but because of the mandate ends up paying thousands of dollars in of premiums, that represents a cost, too....

One more small detail they forgot to tell you about in the health care bill: Taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year will pay roughly $3.9 billion more in taxes — in 2019 alone — because of healthcare reform, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’ official scorekeeper for legislation. The new law raises $15.2 billion over 10 years by limiting the medical expense deduction, a provision widely used by taxpayers who either have a serious illness or are older.

The Duchess of York flicks back her distinctive auburn hair and leans towards the camera. 'The world is changing,' she confides earnestly. 'The future never more uncertain, with an increasing population and a scarcity of national resources.' The words 'Deforestation', 'Terrorism', 'Global Warming', 'Credit Crunch' and 'Famine' flick alarmingly across the screen. 'The demand for well-paid jobs that are spiritually enriching is far outstripping supply,' she continues in Sloaney vowels. 'I want to give my children a chance - the best possible chance.' All rather confusing, given that her children - Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie - are fifth and sixth...

Katie Couric may be getting a taste of her own populist medicine. When the Dow hit 10,000 last October, she (and other network news personalities) used the opportunity to bemoan massive payments to Wall Street bankers. But now the populist sentiment has turned on her. She faces dramatic pay cuts as CBS News downsizes Couric, shown in a, er, file photo at right, "makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year! It's complete insanity," one CBS News insider told the Drudge Report. "We report with great enthusiasm how much bankers are making, how it is out of step...

Obama announces economic aid for struggling middle class families WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is offering new ideas meant to help struggling people pay bills and care for their families, aiming to help a middle-class he says has been "under assault for a long time." Obama and Vice President Joe Biden outlined a series of proposals that will be in Obama's budget next month. They include a doubling of the child care tax credit for families earning under $85,000, a program to cap student loan payments for people carrying a big college debt burden and aid for families taking...

the new Medicare payroll tax hasn't even become law yet, and it's already on its way to being hiked for the second time. The tax was set at 0.5 percent in the orginal Senate bill, and then got raised to 0.9 percent in Harry Reid's final version that passed the Senate. And now the NYT tells us, its going to rise once again. This would actually follow the historical pattern of payroll taxes. The Social Security tax has been raised 20 times since first being implemented in 1935, from 1 percent to 6.2 percent, while the Medicare tax has gone...