Obama takes office at 7% unemployment. It’s now close to 10%. The housing market has tanked since the passage of the stimulus bills. Commodity prices have soared. And Tim Geitner tells David Gregory that if Obama hadn’t stepped in, unemployment would easily be 15%, as if he has some sort of magic powers to know these kinds of things.

In my mind I started thinking about the logic. Suppose I had a skin rash. A doctor prescribes a cream. When I start using it, the rash worsens. As a rational person, what would I assume? That the cream is working, and that if I hadn’t used it I might be far worse? No, we would immediately get rid of that cream and find something else. So the question is, why doesn’t the same logic apply to Obama and the economy?

Thus is the thinking behind this cartoon.

“You lie!” were the shocking words uttered by South Carolina’s Joe Wilson. It reminded one a little of England’s parliamentary debates (and if you have never witnessed them, they are great entertainment.) What bothers me about the whole ordeal is not that Wilson had the gumption to speak out like that, but the response from the media and the left as a result. There is not a shortage of weblogs that are calling for Wilson’s immediate removal. Many are vocally feigning horror at the seemingly sudden so-called “loss of civility.”

All I keep thinking to myself is, really? Soooo… let me get this straight, it’s okay if Democrats vociferously boo George Bush during his State of the Union, but not okay for Republicans to voice opposition to one of Obama’s proposals? It’s okay for Harry Reid to call George Bush a liar, but not for Joe Wilson to call Obama a liar? It’s okay for Obama to use his bully pulpit to call those in opposition to his health care plan liars, and to threaten them by mentioning he will go after them, but somehow Republicans must remain silent? And when Obama says “Wee-weed up,” it’s passed off as rational speech, but when Wilson says, “you lie!” suddenly there’s no decorum? Am I the only one who sees this contradiction?

It’s politics as usual in Washington, which is something I think too many people are losing sight of. Republicans didn’t start this, nor will they finish it. My point is, let’s be rational in our response, and please, can we hold the same standards for both parties?

The whole incident was funny.  Barry left it WIDE open.

Let’s examine why. Yes, the Bible does say give so that your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing, but the truth of the matter is, that’s not how most individuals or corporations choose to operate. When you remove the tax incentive from them, they simply will stop giving. This is unfortunate, because, as one who worked for a nonprofit for three years knows, most charities subsist on the large corporate donations. While the small $25 widow’s mites are genuinely appreciated and coveted, they do not add up enough to cover the overwhelming costs of BOTH running a small corporation as well as doling out resources like food, medicine and education, to those who need it. Most nonprofits work on skeleton budgets as it is already, with much of the staff accepting lower pay than their for-profit counterparts might receive. A lot of the fundraising efforts are spent to find the big donors who are looking for a nice tax write off. While this motivation may not be “ideal,” there is nothing government can or should do to change that.

Barack Obama must know this (or be grossly naive), so why would he propose such an idea? I have my theories.

First, charitable writeoffs take away tax dollars from what otherwise could be used by the government agencies that perform the same services. In essence, private charity is in competition with government for the same dollar, to be used, in theory, for the same purpose. If Obama removes the incentive to give to charity, that money gets funneled into the government instead, so that the government programs end up having a competitive edge over the charities. I find it interesting that when given a choice, most donors would prefer private charities to handle the problems of homelessness, sickness, feeding the hungry, providing after school programs for troubled youth. By removing the writeoffs, government puts restrictions on that choice, meaning if one wants to give to the private charity, they have to do so in addition to giving to the government programs.

The problem with government programs is the lack of competition. We all have heard of corruption occurring within various private charities through the years. The advantage, however, is that if you find an issue with one private charity, simply pull your funds and give to another that does the same job. There are countless of watchdog agencies that do their best to investigate all the various nonprofits, so that one can be an informed giver. Corruption exists because humans exist.

Government lacks that kind of oversight. When corruption occurs, one cannot choose to stop paying taxes. Even when corruption is exposed by various media groups, change is very slow to take place.

The other possible motivation for this (and I’m not saying this is Obama’s motivation, although I’m sure it certainly belongs to a few who support this legislation) is that the greatest source of nonprofits are Christian agencies. I know that there has been a concentrated effort to extinguish Christianity by lobbyists and some in congress. What is the best way to shut down any organization? Remove their source of revenue. This proposal will do just that, forcing many Christian agencies to close their doors.

Thus, I vehemently oppose this idea.

The point is, this is politics as usual and verbal sparring is nothing new. What grates me is how Obama continues to say he is “above” politics and “above” the tactics of partisanship, while he is in the middle of playing their game! I don’t care if you engage in name calling tactics, whether it is in reference to the person or their policies, but don’t sit and pretend you are above it all! McCain may be involved with negative campaigning (which has proven most effective among the general electorate) but at least he owns up to it. There’s no change in Obama’s campaign.

As always, we’ll put up with this for two more months and then the election. Anybody who thinks we will ever remove the attacks out of politics is grossly naïve.

The best thing Barack Obama did for us is choose Joe Biden for his running mate. I am fairly convinced that if he had chosen Hillary, as many Democrats wanted him to, the so-called “Dream Ticket” may have been more than the Republicans could have overcome. Instead, Barack went with the safe choice. This left the door wide open for McCain, who ended up creating a “Dream Ticket” of his own.