How Low Can You Go? – $120,000 Is Middle Class

Bill Richardson has stated that anyone under $120,000 is the middle class for Obama… So again the numbers keep dropping… Yes the article notes that nothing has changed in Obama’s tax policy… Because his tax policy is a sham. These new numbers that keep coming out and the “lower expectations” plan of the Obama Camp are a warning sign to the public… We are going to be down to $75,000 for a married couple by the time election day is here… Wake Up America.

More Change You Can Believe In.

For the second time in a week, a prominent Democrat has downgraded Barack Obama’s definition of the middle class — leading Republicans to question whether he’ll stick to his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000. 

The latest hiccup in the campaign message came Friday morning on KOA-AM, when New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson pegged the middle class as those making $120,000 and under. 

Click here to listen to Richardson talk about Obama’s tax plan. 

“What Obama wants to do is he is basically looking at $120,000 and under among those that are in the middle class, and there is a tax cut for those,” Richardson said in the interview, according to a clip posted on YouTube. 

There’s no indication that Obama has changed his tax policy, which states that anyone making under $200,000 would get a tax cut under his administration, and nobody making under $250,000 would be hit with a tax increase. Richardson actually recited that part of Obama’s plan correctly earlier in his radio interview. 

But the Republican National Committee quickly blasted out an e-mail saying, “At this rate, it won’t take long until Obama is again raising taxes on Americans making as little as $42,000 a year.” 

“When Barack Obama comes to your door this Halloween, there will be no treats — just taxes,” the e-mail said. 

Joe Biden caused headaches for the campaign Monday when he told a Scranton, Pa., TV station that Obama’s tax break “should go to middle class people — people making under $150,000 a year.” 

John McCain said the tax threshold was “creeping down,” while the Obama campaign accused him of lying about Obama’s tax policies. 

Camp Obama Silencing The Desenters

Camp Obama has thrown the Wasthington Times, NYPost and Dallas Morning News off of the campaign plane citing no more room. The Times has been on since the beginning of the campaign so what gives… The fact that all three papers endorsed McCain is what gives. Now what is interesting is Burton claims that the focus is to shift to news agencies that will get swing voters… Ebony and Jet are considered part of the swing voter outreach… Is he saying the are not so sure of the “Black” vote that they need Ebony and Jet to help out or is it that they just want to silence the media that is not for them? Even the Chicago papers got better treatment, again Obama is afraid of loosing his own Chicago supporters?

The Desenters must be silenced.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton confirms Drudge’s report that two right-leaning papers, the Washington Times and the New York Post, have lost their seats on the Obama plane, along with the Dallas Morning News.

“We’re trying to reach as many swing voters that we can and unfortunately had to make some tough choices. but we are accommodating these folks in every way possible,” he said.

The Post and the Morning News are both read primarily in states that aren’t in play, but the Washington Times is read in Northern Virginia.

Burton said the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times had returned to the plane, and confirmed that Ebony and Jet magazines have seats on the plane. (The Tribune has had a reporter on the plane for most of the cycle, but recently added a photographer.)

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said in an email that, contrary to Drudge’s suggestion, she won’t be on Obama’s plane.

“I’ll be at Saturday Night Live covering Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin and possibly the real John McCain,” she said.

Burton said the campaign was making space for the dropped outlets on the campaign bus where possible, and that they were encouraged to travel with Senator Joe Biden. He also noted that Fox News, whose schedule includes perhaps the most openly hostile programming to Obama, has a seat on the plane.

McCain barred Dowd and Time’s Joe Klein, two columnists seen as leaning toward Obama, from his campaign plane, and space has grown very tight on Obama’s in recent days. But Obama aides have also been heard to complain about the coverage from the New York Post and the Washington Times, if not as vociferously as they have about Fox News’s coverage.

The Times took an ideologically-charged shot at Obama in response to its barring, a reminder of the political undercurrent to the choice.

The Wasthington Times Statement:

The Washington Times, which has covered the Barack Obama campaign from the start, was kicked off the Democrat’s campaign plane for the final 72 hours of the race.

The Obama campaign informed the newspaper Thursday evening of its decision, which came two days after The Times editorial page endorsed Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama. The Times editorial page runs completely independent of the news department.

“This feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars covering Senator Obama’s campaign, traveling on his plane, and taking our turn in the reporter’s pool, only to have our seat given away to someone else in the last days of the campaign,” said Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon.

“I hope the candidate that promises to unite America isn’t using a litmus test to determine who gets to cover his campaign.”

The Obama campaign confirmed two other newspapers, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Post, whose editorial boards have endorsed John McCain, were also kicked off the campaign for the final stretch.

“The Times said it won’t be deterred by the Obama decision from continuing to cover the campaign fairly and fully for the final days. It’s reporters will fly commercial and drive to keep its coverage of Obama complete,” Mr. Solomon said.

Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass told reporters on the plan Friday morning that adding a second plane to accommodate more traveling press would cause the campaign to lose one city per day due to logistical considerations.

She added that Michelle Obama is joining the plane, which will require more Secret Service agents to be on board as well.

These were “very hard decisions,” she said, and have “absolutely nothing” to do with the news organizations’ coverage of the race.

The Times formally protested the decision, noting that it has one of the top 20 largest newspaper Web sites in the country, distributes its print edition in the key battleground state of Virginia, and has had its stories repeatedly cited by Mr. Obama and other Democrats throughout the campaign.

“Sen. Obama himself demonstrated he appreciates the importance of The Washington Times and its news coverage. In June, he wrote a letter citing a Times’ investigative project that highlighted government mistreatment of our veterans. Sen. Obama requested an investigation by Congress and the administration, both of which confirmed the problems and led to corrective action at the VA. In his August acceptance speech, Sen. Obama also prominently mentioned our interview with Sen. Phil Gramm and the now infamous comments about a ‘mental recession’ and a ‘nation of whiners’,” wrote Mr. Solomon in an e-mail to Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

Times reporter Christina Bellantoni, who has covered the Democratic campaign since 2007, is being asked to leave the campaign plane starting Sunday. In defending its decision, the Obama campaign said it respected Ms. Bellantoni’s reporting and simply ran out of seats on the campaign plane for the finale because of high demand. It also noted that the Obama campaign is allowing some news media critical of the Democrat to travel, including Fox News.

“Unfortunately, demand for seats on the plane during this final weekend has far exceeded supply, and because of logistical issues we made the decision not to add a second plane. This means we’ve had to make hard and unpleasant for all concerned decisions about limiting some news organizations and in some cases not being in a position to offer space to news organizations altogether,” wrote Obama campaign Senior Advisor and Chief Communications Officer Anita Dunn in an e-mail.

“There are simply no more seats on Senator Obama’s plane,” Ms. Dunn added.

“There are press seats available on Senator Biden’s plane for travel this final weekend and The Washington Times is encouraged to include our vice presidential nominee in your coverage plans for this final stretch,” she said.

Meanwhile, John McCain’s presidential campaign responded to the Times being kicked off the plane as “… not surprising.”

“The least transparent and the least vetted candidate in history is now the least accessible – not surprising,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

The Dallas Morning response:

By now you may have seen the Drudge Report item indicating that the DMN and two other papers who endorsed John McCain are being booted off the Obama campaign. Here’s the facts as we know them.

It’s true that our reporter, Todd J. Gillman, has been told that there’s no space for him after Saturday. Obama aides told the DMN told last Saturday that the paper would lose its seat on the plane on Wednesday. Within a few hours, that moved to Friday. And by midweek, traveling press secretary Jen Psaki had told us that Saturday night’s final flight would be the last leg available. We protested then and continue to do so now, arguing that a paper of the DMN’s size and stature should be on-board.

But we don’t have evidence that the newspaper’s endorsement of Sen. McCain had any bearing on the campaign’s decision to boot us from the plane. No one from the campaign every mentioned it to Todd. (And for the record, he as a reporter, and I as the editor in charge of political coverage, had absolutely no input or knowledge of the endorsement. That’s handled by a different department on a different floor. I didn’t even know about the editorial board’s choice until I read it in the paper a couple of Sundays ago.)

We think the Obama campaign’s decision is to some degree more a function of limited seats, and while we’re a large regional newspaper, we’re not national and we’re not in a swing state. We’ve been on the road with them at key moments, but we’ve not been along for the entire ride, like, say, The New York Times and The Associated Press.

For what it’s worth, we’ve had the same trouble with the McCain campaign. One of our reporters dropped off earlier this week when space became an issue, and we’re only getting back on with McCain tomorrow for the final weekend because they, unlike the Obama campaign, are adding a second plane.

That said, we’ve protested loudly and frequently with the Obama campaign. While we understand their decision, TDMN is one of the biggest papers in the South and Southwest, and over the years and in this campaign, we’ve demonstrated a strong commitment to campaign coverage. We believe very passionately in covering campaigns completely and aggressively, in being our readers’ eyes and ears on the scene as much as possible. We let the campaign know in early October that we wanted to travel along for the duration of the campaign. We still hope they change their minds.

Plus, we’re the only Southern or Southwestern paper that’s been on board constantly through October, and if we get booted, there won’t be any outside of New York, LA, Chicago, Washington and Boston.

The real problem is that the campaign does not want to add a second plane. Here’s how this works: The campaign makes travel arrangements and bills journalists for the costs. Your share of the cost is based on the total cost being divvyed up among the number of journalists traveling. So if there’s too many journalists for one plane but not quite enough for two, someone’s not going to make the cut.

And it does seem true that the campaign is allowing for more friendly media. But that should come as no surprise – Sen. Obama hasn’t done a press conference in more than a month, but he’s given “exclusive” interviews to Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow and Mario Lopez. (Don’t know this media titan? He’s the host of “Extra,” an entertainment news show, and a former star of “Saved By The Bell.”) This should tell you something – Sen. Obama is sitting on a lead and doesn’t want to risk aggressive questions by unbiased political reporters.

But for many readers, a lot of this is inside baseball. Here’s what you need to know – over the next five days, The Dallas Morning News will bring you complete coverage of the campaign. Todd is a dedicated guy who can function pretty well on little sleep and a whiz at travel arrangements, so he’ll hopscotch along behind the campaign if that’s what it takes. But no matter what, we’ll have robust news and analysis of the final stretch of this historic campaign.

Obama – Don’t Expect Too Much From Me

Camp Obama is already planning their retreat if elected. The campaign knows that all of the Bullshit Obama is spewing to get elected is not reality, but just words to get elected. They are planning on how to back out of their promises once Obama gets elected. You know sort of like how he backed out of public financing… This is just the beginning, if Obama is elected expect more of these let downs.

You know those takes breaks for those making under $250,000 $200,000 $150,000…

The promise not to raise taxes on those same people

Affordable health care

etc..

All of the promises are going to disappear once he is president. Your taxes will go up, every last one of you, except those that do not owe taxes or get 100% refunds.

More Change You Can Believe In!

By Tim Reid, The Times of London

Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harboring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of “hope” and “change” are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, “so there’s not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair.”

The aide said that Obama himself was the first to realize that expectations risked being inflated.

In an interview with a Colorado radio station, Obama appeared to be engaged already in expectation lowering. Asked about his goals for the first hundred days, he said he would need more time to tackle such big and costly issues as health care reform, global warming and Iraq.

“The first hundred days is going to be important, but it’s probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference,” he said. He has also been reminding crowds in recent days how “hard” it will be to achieve his goals, and that it will take time.

“I won’t stand here and pretend that any of this will be easy — especially now,” Obama told a rally in Sarasota, Florida, yesterday, citing “the cost of this economic crisis, and the cost of the war in Iraq.” Obama’s transition team is headed by John Podesta, a Washington veteran and a former chief-of-staff to Bill Clinton. He has spent months overseeing a virtual Democratic government-in-exile to plan a smooth transition should Obama emerge victorious next week.

The plans are so far advanced that an Obama Cabinet has been largely decided upon, with the expectation that most of his senior appointments could be announced shortly after election day.

Bill Burton Just Doesn’t Get It

Obama spokeman just does not understand questions and cannot answer them without trying to jump to new subjects… This is typical of him in recent times when hit with the hard questions.

Now listen to Cavuto’s question and think about it logically, yes investors are worried that in 3 months will have to pay larger sums of money in capital gains and are trying to cash out now.

$3 Million For 30 Minutes Of Obama’s Best Acting Performance

Obama’s $3 Million 30 minute infomercial is being touted by the liberal media as some sort of miracle speech… It was nothing more than repeats of his alleged plans. Yes Obama is a great speaker, but that does not make a great leader. His speech was like listening to a used cars salesman. Makes you feel warm and fuzzy, but he really doesn’t give a shit about you.

Barack keeps forgetting that his economic plan was prior to the recent downturn in our economy, before the loss of trillions in the stock market, before the collapse of financial institutions and markets around the world and before the $700 Billion bailout.

More Change You Can Believe In! Breitbart picks apart the spin from the car salesman…

WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures he would face in office.Obama’s assertion that “I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond” the expense of his promises is accepted only by his partisans. His vow to save money by “eliminating programs that don’t work” masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify what those programs are—beyond the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

A sampling of what voters heard in the ad, and what he didn’t tell them:

THE SPIN: “That’s why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year.”

THE FACTS: His plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it’s not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.

___

THE SPIN: “I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost.”

THE FACTS: Independent analysts say both Obama and Republican John McCain would deepen the deficit. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Obama’s policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years—and that analysis accepts the savings he claims from spending cuts. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, whose other findings have been quoted approvingly by the Obama campaign, says: “Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially increase the national debt over the next 10 years.” The analysis goes on to say: “Neither candidate’s plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified.”

___

THE SPIN: “Here’s what I’ll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the U.S. over the next two years and eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Help homeowners who are making a good faith effort to pay their mortgages, by freezing foreclosures for 90 days. And just like after 9-11, we’ll provide low-cost loans to help small businesses pay their workers and keep their doors open. ”

THE FACTS: His proposals—the tax cuts, the low-cost loans, the $15 billion a year he promises for alternative energy, and more—cost money, and the country could be facing a record $1 trillion deficit next year. Indeed, Obama recently acknowledged—although not in his commercial—that: “The next president will have to scale back his agenda and some of his proposals.”

___

THE SPIN: “I also believe every American has a right to affordable health care.”

THE FACTS: That belief should not be confused with a guarantee of health coverage for all. He makes no such promise. Obama hinted as much in the ad when he said about the problem of the uninsured: “I want to start doing something about it.” He would mandate coverage for children but not adults. His program is aimed at making insurance more affordable by offering the choice of government-subsidized coverage similar to that in a plan for federal employees and other steps, including requiring larger employers to share costs of insuring workers.

___

THE SPIN: “We are currently spending $10 billion a month in Iraq, when they have a $79 billion surplus. It seems to me that if we’re going to be strong at home as well as strong abroad that we’ve got to look at bringing that war to a close.” These lines in the ad were taken from a debate with McCain.

THE FACTS: Obama was once and very often definitive about getting combat troops out in 16 months (At times during the primaries, he promised to do so within a year). More recently, without backing away explicitly from the 16-month withdrawal pledge, he has talked of the need for flexibility. In the primaries, it would have been a jarring departure for him to have said merely that “we’ve got to look at” ending the war. As for Iraq’s surplus, it’s true that Iraq could end up with a surplus that large, but that hasn’t happened yet. 

McCain’s Health Plan Will Help More People

According to a top economist, 15-21 million currently uninsured Americans will insurance will be able to get insurance under McCain’s plan. That is about half of the current uninsured Americans.

Something the article does not mention is the fact that under Obama’s plan, insurance costs will go up. The main reasons for this is the mandatory covering of preconditions. This shifts the odds for the insurance companies and the only way for them to compensate will be to increase the cost of insurance. Don’t forget if the insurance companies cannot make money then there is no reason for them to stay in business, that is unless the government takes them over and delivers socialized medicine…

In a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) opinion piece, one of the nation’s top economists says more Americans would benefit from the health plan presented by presidential hopeful, John McCain, than that of his opponent, Barack Obama.  Robert Carroll, once a deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis at the US Treasury, bases his opinion on the refundable tax credit, proposed by McCain, compared to the current system, which provides a tax exclusion to help offset the cost of employer-based healthcare insurance coverage.

Carroll, now serving as vice president for economic policy at the Tax Foundation and as executive-in-residence for the School of Public Affairs for American University, expects the McCain plan to make insurance a possibility for as many as 15 million to 21 million currently uninsured Americans, although not all this new coverage will be employer based.

As an example of the McCain plan, a family of four pays $14,000 per year for healthcare insurance.  Regardless of the family’s income, it would get a $5,000 tax credit to help offset the cost of the policy.

Under the current plan, that same family is allowed a tax exclusion to offset the cost of the healthcare policy but the dollar amount of the exclusion fluctuates from family to family according to household income.  Under this plan, families earning about $25,000 and those earning $110,000 and up get the largest tax exclusions, roughly $4,250.

Under the McCain plan, the American approach to health care is expected to shift, with insurance coverage providing mostly for catastrophic care while the individual pays for routine medical exams and procedures.  Carroll says the current tax policy is biased unfairly against Americans wanting more comprehensive coverage for catastrophic illnesses but McCain’s plan will erase that tax bias.  He says the McCain plan will result in more Americans choosing insurance coverage that offers more services for catastrophic illnesses and with higher deductibles than the more generalized policies popular today with low deductibles that provide coverage for predictable medical costs.

Carroll feels McCain’s plan is important for keeping down the costs of the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs, which consume about 20% of today’s federal expenditures but which are expected to grow to 40% by 2040.  Carroll expects the tax credit from McCain’s plan to slow the growth of the Medicare and Medicaid plans more so than the demographic-driven Social Security program but McCain’s proposed tax credit, as well as other measures of the McCain plan, are expected to generate broad benefits well into the future.

Obama’s Money Trail

Joe Biden – People Making Under $150,000 Will Get Tax Break

In only a couple of weeks we have gone from people Making less than $250,000 to $200,000 to $150,000 will get tax break.

Pretty soon it will be anyone collecting Socialist benefits will get tax break…

More Change You Can Believe In

Rev Wright is the Best of What The Black Church has to Offer

Barack Obama Frequented Palestinian Events

Do you really think he support Israel? Yet another contradiction of Barack Obama.

Jewish People Vote For Change You Can Believe In