Congenital Liar vs. Socialist Class Warrior

Mona Charen had a similar reaction I did to Hillary Clinton's response to a question about her Bosnia tall tales in this week's debate. She seems to be very forthright in admitting that she is in fact a congenital liar. She began her response by saying "I'm not dumb." Now, if someone accuses you of being a liar and you respond by saying I'm not dumb, what does that mean? Isn't that conceding that you are in fact a liar? Are you saying well, I may be a liar but at least I'm not dumb. Then she goes on to say that she "said things that were not in keeping with what I knew to be the case". Most people would use the word "lie" to describe the saying something that is not in keeping with what you know to be the truth. So, she doesn't even seem to pretend that she was merely mis-speaking which would imply an accidental mistatement rather than a deliberate falsehood. Of course, interestingly, Barack Obama didn't take advantage of this answer at all. Instead he basically said that we all make mistakes and it wasn't a big deal. No big deal, we politicians all lie. Hmmm.


Obama's worst answer to me was the one regarding the capital gains tax. Charlie Gibson asked the question from a remarkably conservative point of view. Since lowering capital gains taxes leads to greater tax revenue, why do you want to raise it? Obama didn't really dispute the assertion that lowering capital gains tax does lead to more revenue. Instead he said that it wasn't fair that a secretary paid a higher tax than a hedge fund manager. This is a total class warfare, socialist answer. He is willing to forego greater government revenue just on the unfairness of the secretary allegedly paying a higher rate. Yet, by comparing a salary to a capital gain, he is comparing two different things. Capital gains are not indexed for inflation so if the asset was held for many years the seller may be paying tax on pure inflation, not income at all. Further, to raise taxes on this over simplistic comparison is appalling. Most people who pay capital gains taxes are not in fact billionaire hedge fund managers. Many may be average Americans who invest in stocks or real estate or something else. He is taxing them simply because there a few ultra rich investors and Wall Street tycoons out there making a lot of money. This kind of policy would be disastrous for the economy.


So that's the choice among Democrats: the congenital liar vs the Socialist class warrior. Even though I'm not crazy about McCain, he may be the only sane choice.

Adios Mark Penn

Now that Mark Penn is gone, the Clinton campaign might actually have a chance!