President Obama has announced a plan cut the deduction percentage that can be taken on one’s tax return for charitable contributions. While the administration claims that it will not affect behavior of taxpayers who give, we know better. This move will negatively impact charities. Why go after charities under the guise of soaking the rich by cutting the amount of deductions available to them? Perhaps to marginalise charities and use the proceeds to fund big government programs that will pick up the slack (in theory of course)?

Speaker Pelosi Confused, Thinks She’s Secretary of State

Last Friday Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took it upon herself to reach out to the Dalai Lama in beleaguered Tibet, visiting its universally revered religious leader and appearing with him in ethnic garb for a series of photo ops. She denounced the oppression of the Chinese government perpetrated upon the Tibetian populace. “As a freedom-loving people, if we don’t speak out about the Chinese oppression, then we have lost our right to speak on human rights,” Pelosi grandly stated. Wrapped up in self-righteous euphoria, she was not to be stopped by concern that maybe there were more pressing matters facing her own constituents, or that perhaps there were plenty of other oppressed folks out there that she hasn’t felt the urge to publicly support. Was it a play to boost her dreadful approval ratings? Or just a chance to get some rare media coverage in a Presidential Election year? The answer remains unclear, but what is clear is that Pelosi seems to forget we pay professionals to the foreign relations thing for us.

Partisan Rancor Spreads to Christmastide?

Indeed, with the campaign season and the Christmas season coinciding this year, top greeting card producers have devised a way to make a buck off of rampant partisanship. The expanded greeting card racks at fine retailers everywhere have been spiced up with gems like the one with picture of Dubya on the cover exlaiming, “I’ve got three words for you!” The punch line inside? “Merry Christmas!”

Targeting the GOP demographic, on the other hand, is what you see above. Great, eh? Feel free to disseminate via email to your Republican friends. You can blame my Moto RazR for the poor picture quality.

Cheap Shot

Drudge Report is hailed/reviled for its alternative approach to the news. I hit it probably a hundred times a day myself. Some have accused it of leaning slightly to the right. Some have dissed its brashly unhip graphics. At any rate, the Drudge Report has led with mild sensationalism on occasion, but never has sunken to checkout-line tabloid-esque levels of cheapness to the best of my memory. Until now. What renders this truly a below-the-belt hit in the mind of americanrevolution is that the unflattering photo and caption are not even linked to a story.

The

John Edwards Has Some Really Creative Field Organizers!

Click the pic to link to Edwards’ Myspace blog, where he touts this clever political cartoon sent in from one of his operatives. Thomast Nast has nothing on this guy! Grab that public financing and run with it John! You could…go…all..the…WAY!!!!

Edwards Still Appears to be Amateur

Des Moine Register blogger Joel Veldkamp has shed light on another of brilliant plans that make John Edwards such an attractive Presidential candidate. Veldkamp quotes Edwards:

“What we would do is we would submit legislation saying if universal healthcare is not passed by this summer, that the Congress and members of the administration would lose their healthcare coverage.”

“In other words,” observes Veldkamp, ”Edwards would ask Congress to deny themselves healthcare if they didn’t pass universal healthcare.”

BRILLIANT!

Public Service Announcement: Candidate Edwards Appears to be an Amateur

Check out John Edwards on ABC’s “This Week.” He shows clearly that he hasn’t put it all together just yet. Worse, he seems to have picked up a bad habit from his 2004 running mate John Kerry-the ‘ol flip flop. Just something to keep in mind as the race heats up.

Are We There Yet?

The din of defeatism is so loud on Capitol Hill these days when it comes to Iraq. Even Republicans are joining the cry in the interest of trying to prolong their political careers. Shame on these spineless Congressmen. While many are joining the wave of defeatist paranio, some Americans still understand the grave situation the nation would find itself in if the Democrats were to declare defeat and evacuate US troops from Iraq. They realize that, as Dick Cheney bluntly explained today, that the casualties US forces have suffered in Iraq are worth the lives saved in keeping nuke-toting terrorists off American soil. So like these perspective folks, I remain in full support of the action in Iraq, despite being well aware of past missteps and wary of more in the future. And as such it just makes me tired all over to hear this whining about Iraq.

I heard the most perfect analogy on Spencer Hughes’ radio program today. A caller said something to the effect that these whining defeatocrats remind one of the kids in the back seat that keep whining ‘are we there yet?’ The Dems (and a some of these despicable fair-weather Republicans) should grow up and act responsibly rather than pandering to masses. No we aren’t at the Grand Canyon yet. Unfortunately, in our case to turn around and go back means to declare with trumpets blaring America’s gross impotence. That is unacceptable. So if you don’t like it, shut up or bring a solution to the table.

Hillary Tells Supporters to Give Money or Get Lost

Mara Copeland developed a political dialogue with the Clintons through MySpace, exchanging what she calls “personal” emails with the two and other Clintonites. Once the Clintons-or their campaign people masquerading as the Clintons en vivo-had poor Mara on the hook, they demanded  cash and set a deadline! Full story is on Newsmax.

Double Standards of Political Correctness

Funny how the response to what is said is determined by who says it. Let’s be honest-if a Republican commented that Barack Obama, the fresh young Senator from Illinois, is “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” well, the media, the DNC, the intelligentsia-heck, just about everyone-would waste no time in demanding an apology, and the more extreme factions within each of the aforementioned groups would be haughtily muttering accusations of racism just above their collective breaths. It obviously insinuates that prior to Mr. He’s-so-hot-right-now Obama’s rise to prominence, there existed no clean-cut and competent African American statesmen. That’s a pretty unequivocable slap in the face of the African-American community and beyond.

And yet, it was not a Republican congressman who remarked such. It was 2008 Presidential hopeful Joe Biden, a Democratic congressman from Deleware (CNN).  Now two weeks later, the incident seems to be all but forgotten. But it was not the only recent racially-insensitive remark by a congressman this month, and indeed another Democrat. South Carolina’s Robert Ford proclaimed earlier in the month that “Obama winning the primary would drag down the rest of the party…Every Democratic candidate running on that ticket would lose because he’s black and he’s at the top of the ticket” (Associated Press). Ford summed it up rather nicely: “I love Obama, but I’m not going to kill myself.”

Even if these remarks are made by Democrats in the context of Obama’s impact on the party, they still should provide a grand display of the mass hypocrisy of the party that claims to be the party of the minorities, the poor, the middle class, and of tolerance. If a Republican were to stand up and say Obama could not win the Presidency because he is Black, they would be burned in effigy. Somehow, these utterances from Democratic lips are easily forgiven and forgotten.

For reference, consider two historical cases. Republican Trent Lott made a racially-insensitive remark in 2003 and was forced to resign his post as majority leader in the Senate. Conversely, Robert Byrd, a documented Ku Klux Klan leader until at least the late 1940s, became in 2006 the longest serving Senator in US history (Wikipedia). Yes, he was a Democrat.

As long as Democrats can get away with publicly-voiced disrespect for African-Americans, no progress will be made toward a time where when we mention the Senator from Illinois, the parenthetical notation of his race is no longer obligatory. That, my fellow Americans, should be the real story here.

www.barackobama.com