…ah, yes

We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.

Where do Obama’s higher taxes hit?

$150,000? $200,000? $250,000?

And why $200,000 for an individual, but $250,000 for a couple? Where’s the fairness in that?

1. I didn’t sleep well last night. Part of the reason was the six pound black cat curled up between my shoulder and my chin, purring her little head off, and emitting tiny, stinky cat farts….
2. I, and many others like me, don’t resent those who earn more than we do. We aspire to earn that much or more! And we work for it. For example, my husband and I earned degrees to help us earn more. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Business and he has a Bachelor’s degree in IT and a Master’s in IT Management with a Security concentration.
3. Do Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the democrats in Congress realize that with their increasing taxes on “the rich” and spending huge amounts that they will end up becoming a sub-prime loan recipient? And that we, the taxpaying lenders, won’t be getting a “bailout” this time? And why $250K? I think that’s far too low. Many families making that in Manhattan or San Francisco are solidly middle class, not rich, because of the cost of living.

a cartoon from ALG:

Joe Biden was encouraging the crowd at his rally in Colorado today to vote early since early voting in Colorado goes on until October 31st. Shep cut away from Joe’s giving his website address for information on early voting and said:

Shep: We won’t interrupt him for the meat of his discussion, but Mary Ann Marsh, why is this early voting so important?

Mary Ann: Well it’s everything Shep. You have to assume that all these polls are much closer than they appear and as Major Garrett said in the earlier segment, any vote you can get before election day is a vote in the bank. You can count those. You can go into election day, know exactly how many votes you have and then based on models know exactly how many votes you have to get on election day. The big thing here Shep that you’ve got to keep in mind is, a good field organization is worth three to five points on election day. You can find three to five points on the ground on election day. So if these polls are close then that’s exactly what’s going to determine this race and you have to say, in that respect, Barack Obama should have the advantage.

This particular line piqued my interest:

You can go into election day, know exactly how many votes you have and then based on models know exactly how many votes you have to get on election day.

I was under the impression that early votes were counted at the same time that absentee ballots were counted, on election day.

So I called up the County Clerk’s office and asked just to make sure.

Early votes are held until election day. So are absentee votes. Then the moving company brings all the voting machines to a warehouse for processing. All the votes are processed at that time.

So, I don’t know how Mary Ann Marsh can know how many votes there are for any candidate. The most she can know is how many early voters there were.

Exit polling, notoriously unreliable, is even harder with early voting, too many places, too many days…

So far this morning I’ve heard Maria Cardona and Stephanie Cutter trying to explain Joe Biden's remarks from Sunday.

Both are saying that with the world as it is today, whoever is elected president will be tested, especially with the “failed policies of the last eight years”.

Joe Biden said:

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. (emphasis mine)

Maria and Stephanie are just trying to spin us away from what Biden actually said. The fact that Biden speaks only of Obama, not McCain is one reason; The “whoever wins the Presidency will be tested” line just doesn’t cut the mustard.

The other is the emphasized phrase above: “a generated crisis”. Joe Biden is telling his audience that one of our enemies out there will generate a crisis in order to test Obama. Creating something new, not just the world as it is today. Not just Iraq and Afghanistan. Something else.

Obama is running for Jimmy Carter’s second term. The world will expect Obama to react just as Jimmy Carter did.

UPDATE: Your Radio Equalizer has talk radio reaction to Biden’s comments and the Obama camp spin.

That’s a question I must ask when I hear him say this:

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.

Now that Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama here’s a poll question for you.

That’s the number given by Maria Cardona of the Obama campaign when asked by Julie Banderas if the $250K was net or gross.

That makes it even worse.

Maria Cardona continues to insist that 98% of small businesses make less than this. But she’s talking gross numbers here. Does she or the Obama campaign realise how many small businesses can GROSS a quarter million dollars a year? Easily?

There’s a HUGE difference between a company grossing $250K and netting $250K…

Say you have a small retail establishment.

You may have rent of  $2,250/month (1,500 sq ft @ $1.50/sq ft) = $27,000

You may have a couple of employees. Maybe at $12/hour. That’s $48,000 just for regular time, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. Then add in $4,131 for the employer’s portion of FICA (social security and medicare), add in unemployment taxes and any benefits you might be paying. That $48,000 in salary can become $62,000 when all is said and done.

So far, with just rent and two employees we are up to $89,000.

Then we have insurance, advertising, shipping, inventory, licenses and other business fees, local taxes, inventory losses, perhaps franchise fees (depending on the business), and a myriad of other expenses. And you want to pay yourself something. You also want to be able to reinvest something into the business.

With good sales, or a service that’s in demand; business to business or business to consumer or both, I would say the number of small businesses that can gross $250K or more in any year is far in excess of only 2% of small businesses.

Fraudulent registrations don’t really matter because they don’t lead to voter fraud on election day.

That’s what Chris Sautter, Democratic Attorney is saying on this video from Studio B.

“But who is going to turn up? Is Terrell Owens going to turn up in Las Vegas with an ID that says that he’s Terrell Owens? That’s not gonna happen.”

Mr. Sautter, that only works where a photo ID is required when going to the voting booth on Election Day.

In Indiana, where a photo ID is required, voting under someone else’s name is indeed difficult if not impossible.

It doesn’t work when, as in Illinois, one need only give the poll workers a name that the poll worker can find a sheet in their book for.

This goes along with my post on registration deadlines. A four week deadline is perfectly acceptable and there is no need for same day registration and voting anytime, anywhere. It only leads to fraud.

And look how hard photo ID laws have been fought against by the likes of Acorn and their friends. They’ve been fought against because it makes it more difficult to actually cast a fraudulent vote on election day.