I begin with crediting His Majesty for our current pullback in Iraq. About time. And if a slimey old coot Neo-Con like Dick Cheney is against it, methinks Majesty is doing something very right there. But the rest of what I have to say is not so complimentary:
Flashback to September 2008, the campaign trail, Dover New Hampshire: His Majesty looks all of us straight in the eye and pledges that no middle class American family with an income of less than $250,000 (me included) will see any form of tax increase. And what have we instead seen in the months since Majesty was coronated?
1. Statements by the Administration (Axelrod) on ABC last Sunday morning that Majesty will not for one second "rule out" the prospect of supporting a health care tax hike in the soon to-be-battled health care reform bill debate, i.e. the taxing of middle class Americans' employee health care benefits. Strange they wouldn't "rule out" such a new tax out given Majesty's campaign pledge. And the most disingenuous aspect to this: Majesty's campaign spent myriad campaign funds on nationwide attack ads villifying John McCain for advocating the very same thing in terms of taxing employee benefits. McCain was wrong, but apparently Majesty was right then, and is now right again advocating the precise opposite position to which he spewed his venom at McCain during the campaign.
1. Statements by the Administration (Axelrod) on ABC last Sunday morning that Majesty will not for one second "rule out" the prospect of supporting a health care tax hike in the soon to-be-battled health care reform bill debate, i.e. the taxing of middle class Americans' employee health care benefits. Strange they wouldn't "rule out" such a new tax out given Majesty's campaign pledge. And the most disingenuous aspect to this: Majesty's campaign spent myriad campaign funds on nationwide attack ads villifying John McCain for advocating the very same thing in terms of taxing employee benefits. McCain was wrong, but apparently Majesty was right then, and is now right again advocating the precise opposite position to which he spewed his venom at McCain during the campaign.
2. The increased tobacco tax advocated by Majesty and now passed into law, which is completely regressive in nature, hammering lower income folks very disproportionely, in order to pay for an extension of the children's health care program (yes, an inherently funding-worthy pursuit on its face, but there are other ways to fund things besides hammering lower income folks with huge new taxes during the worst economic downturn we've seen since the early 80's or perhaps earlier (which dems in recent months have loved to take advantage of at every turn, when it serves their purposes, in terms of passing massive new ultra-liberal pieces of legislation with narry an ounce of debate or any federal lawmaker typically being given the chance to even read the legislation before a vote is forced upon it)).
3. The massive "cap-and-trade" bill which just passed the House in the evening hours Friday despite 300 new pages of complex statutory jargon only being added to the bill that morning by ultra-liberal freak Henry Waxman. The Wall Street Journal called this bill the single largest tax hike in American history, hitting the middle class and all Americans significantly hard, which I'm afraid is the truth. The dems have tried to defend it in their typical spin-and-chicken$hit manner by claiming it's "technically" not a new tax since even though all Americans will see a big increase in their regular energy bills from ulility companies, such increase will not be collected "directly" by the federal government, but rather by the ultility companies themselves as they pass-through their heightened costs (resulting from the bill) to all of us consumers. Say what, dems? Sounds like a huge new tax on us regular folks, if you ask me.
So now let's get down to brass tacks (I love that phrase). Let's talk turkey (love that one too): His Majesty made a solemn pledge to us during the campaign -- a promise that he has been willing, and apparently continues to be willing, to break whenever he feels like it. Now, am I going to say that he was lying to us when made that devout pledge? Hell no. I think he believed it at the time. But for him to now go around disregarding that very simple promise, right and left, is to me a sign that Majesty is very little different from basically every president I've seen during my lifetime -- campaign promises are meant to be broken, and prior words mean absolutely nothing. Hardly "Change We Can Believe In."
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