I gave him a card that had a picture of Obama on the front.... it said "I've heard you have experience with birthdays" And inside it said "who needs experience" I just couldn't resist getting it for him. But along those same lines this little ad by Paris Hilton is funny. Gotta love sarcastic mocking.....

Drilling here in the US is NOT about lowering the price at the pump.  Despite what you think the American public believes drilling in the US is about supporting US companies and US oil vs. supporting foreign companies and foreign oil.  Drilling may not lower the price at the pump all that much, but we aren't idiots.  We know that.  We are tired of being tied to foreign oil.  SO...... in addition to weaning ourselves off oil and expanding alternative energy sources let's at least stop supporting the countries that are not even our real friends.

Nancy Pelosi..... get a clue.

Posted by Beldar at BeldarBlog

McCain:

"In war and peace, I have been an imperfect servant of my country. But I have been her servant first, last and always. Whenever I faced an important choice between my country's interests or my own interests, party politics or any special interest, I chose my country. Nothing has ever mattered more to me than the honor of serving America, and nothing ever will.

"If you elect me President, I will always put our country first. I will put its greatness; its prosperity and peace; and the hopes and concerns of the people who make it great before any personal or partisan interest.

"We are going to start making this government work for you and not for the ambitions of the powerful. And I will keep that promise every hour of every day I am in office, so help me God."

Obama:

Obama was waxing lyrical about last week's trip to Europe, when he concluded, according to the meeting attendee, "this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for."

The 200,000 souls who thronged to his speech in Berlin came not just for him, [Obama] told the enthralled audience of congressional representatives. "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions," he said, according to the source.

On Wednesday morning, House leadership aides pushed back against interpretations of this comment as self-aggrandizing, saying that when the presumptive Democratic nominee said, "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America," he was actually trying to deflect attention from himself.

I started out my morning yesterday by picking up the Wall Street Journal from my driveway. Inside I found an article detailing Obama's tax policies. After hearing that Warren Buffet stated "the rich don't pay enough taxes" I was interested to see just how much tax Obama felt the rich should be paying. Now keep in mind that rich is relative. Many people who are making the $250,000 a year that is the magical "rich" number are small business owners. They are making a payroll, keeping employees, paying into the tax system in other ways.... Warren Buffet may feel that the rich don't pay enough taxes.... why shouldn't he... he has billions of dollars. The reality is the *real* rich people have their money in trusts and shelters. Trusts don't pay taxes.... Senator Kennedy pays less in taxes than someone making the *magical number* of $250,000. Yet he has millions of dollars more. How? by putting it in a trust. Working people who are striving to get ahead, to make money and still live don't have enough to hide it in trusts. Only people like Buffet and Kennedy do that.... Yet these are the people who feel free messing with your money and my money. The top 10% of wage earners in the United States pay 80% of all the taxes collected in this country. The bottom 50% pay less than 10% of the taxes.

But I digress... let's take a look at what Mr. Obama suggests for those who want to achieve the American dream.

Michael Boskin, writing in the July 30th Wall Street Journal calls "Obamanomics" a "recipe for recession." Obama's tax policies are extreme to a degree we have not seen in this country in a long time:

The top 35% marginal income tax rate rises to 39.6%; adding the state income tax, the Medicare tax, the effect of the deduction phase-out and Mr. Obama's new Social Security tax (of up to 12.4%) increases the total combined marginal tax rate on additional labor earnings (or small business income) from 44.6% to a whopping 62.8%. People respond to what they get to keep after tax, which the Obama plan reduces from 55.4 cents on the dollar to 37.2 cents -- a reduction of one-third in the after-tax wage!

This chart shows the details:

As Boskin points out, with a Democratic Congress writing tax legislation things could get even worse:

On economic policy, the president proposes and Congress disposes, so presidents often wind up getting the favorite policy of powerful senators or congressmen. Thus, while Mr. Obama also proposes an alternative minimum tax (AMT) patch, he could instead wind up with the permanent abolition plan for the AMT proposed by the Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D., N.Y.) -- a 4.6% additional hike in the marginal rate with no deductibility of state income taxes. Marginal tax rates would then approach 70%, levels not seen since the 1970s and among the highest in the world. The after-tax return to work -- the take-home wage for more time or effort -- would be cut by more than 40%.

I fail to see how these new taxes, this economic recipe for failure could help the country. On the contrary it would devastate the economy. But how is it in terms of fairness? Tell me... is it even slightly moral for a government to confiscate 70% of anyone’s income? I know, morality can not be expected of a government, especially one that uses those tax dollars to kill children but let’s get real here folks. Where is the incentive to make money if the government is just going to take it away? Who would want to work harder and harder to get ahead when the profit in doing so is just taken and handed to someone else. This is nothing more than punishing a person for making money. It would be deeply ironic if, at a time when the rest of the world is moving toward greater freedom in the form of lower tax rates, the United States were to regress to the stultifying statism of the 1970s. Yet that is exactly what Barack Obama promises.

Before a military audience in Denver today, John McCain launched his strongest attack yet against Barack Obama. The attack was devastating because it is true. Here are some excerpts; McCain began by recalling the beginning of the surge:

Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed.

We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the "surge" was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops -- which I had advocated since 2003, after my first trip to Iraq. Many observers said my position would end my hopes of becoming president. I said I would rather lose a campaign than see America lose a war. My choice was not smart politics. It didn't test well in focus groups. It ignored all the polls. It also didn't matter. The country I love had one final chance to succeed in Iraq. The new strategy was it. So I supported it. Today, the effects of the new strategy are obvious. The surge has succeeded, and we are, at long last, finally winning this war.

Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better.

And as our troops took the fight to the enemy, Senator Obama tried to cut off funding for them. He was one of only 14 senators to vote against the emergency funding in May 2007 that supported our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...

Three weeks after Senator Obama voted to deny funding for our troops in the field, General Ray Odierno launched the first major combat operations of the surge. Senator Obama declared defeat one month later: "My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now." His assessment was popular at the time. But it couldn't have been more wrong.

By November 2007, the success of the surge was becoming apparent. Attacks on Coalition forces had dropped almost 60 percent from pre-surge levels. American casualties had fallen by more than half. Iraqi civilian deaths had fallen by more than two-thirds. But Senator Obama ignored the new and encouraging reality. "Not only have we not seen improvements," he said, "but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there."

If Senator Obama had prevailed, American forces would have had to retreat under fire. The Iraqi Army would have collapsed. Civilian casualties would have increased dramatically. Al Qaeda would have killed the Sunni sheikhs who had begun to cooperate with us, and the "Sunni Awakening" would have been strangled at birth. Al Qaeda fighters would have safe havens, from where they could train Iraqis and foreigners, and turn Iraq into a base for launching attacks on Americans elsewhere. Civil war, genocide and wider conflict would have been likely.

Above all, America would have been humiliated and weakened. Our military, strained by years of sacrifice, would have suffered a demoralizing defeat. Our enemies around the globe would have been emboldened. ...

Senator Obama told the American people what he thought you wanted to hear. I told you the truth.

Fortunately, Senator Obama failed, not our military. We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right. Violence in Iraq fell to such low levels for such a long time that Senator Obama, detecting the success he never believed possible, falsely claimed that he had always predicted it. ... In Iraq, we are no longer on the doorstep of defeat, but on the road to victory.

Senator Obama said this week that even knowing what he knows today that he still would have opposed the surge. In retrospect, given the opportunity to choose between failure and success, he chooses failure. I cannot conceive of a Commander in Chief making that choice.

That recitation of Obama's conduct is entirely factual.

Hat tip Power Line