President-elect Obama WILL LOWER your taxes.

[NOTE: Oct. 17, 2012: This post has gotten a lot of views today, so thanks to whomever linked it.  It should be noted that President Obama did indeed lower the taxes of the middle class through a variety of tax credits, as outlined in this article from January 2010.  If you didn’t notice them, you were probably making too much money to be affected — and have been doing well without them.  – GAD]

I’m thinking, looking at the polls and trends, that it’s not too early to begin to reach out an olive branch to our Republican brothers and sisters:  I hope that the next eight years of the Obama presidency will not be as bitter and hateful as the Clinton/Gingrich/Limbaugh decade, and that we can all work together and respect each other as fellow Americans.  I hope that the GOP will take the opportunity of its coming decade in the wilderness to ditch its racism, nativism, homophobia and warmongering, and return to its roots as the party of small, limited, efficient government; strong but smart defense; defense of individual liberties and privacy;  respect for the Constitution and rule of law; and conservation of our natural resources.  THAT’s a party we Dems could work well with!

I also know that many of you have probably convinced yourselves of the truth of some really scary propaganda about President Obama that just ain’t true, two examples of which I’d like to try to debunk here:  that he will raise your taxes, and that he doesn’t know how to defend this nation (much more competently than the last insane bunch.)  SO:

1. President Obama WILL LOWER Your Taxes!

Repeat a lie often enough… you know the rest.  Hence, it’s common wisdom, maybe even among some Obama supporters, that as a Democratic President he will raise our taxes at least a little.  Not true.  UNLESS you are in the wealthiest 0.1% – that’s one out of a thousand (and given you are educated blog readers in Orange County, maybe I should say 0.5% of you) – IN THAT CASE your taxes will go back up to about the same rate they were under President Clinton.  (Anybody remember Peace and Prosperity?)

As Maya Schenwar informs us,

Obama’s plan would grant tax cuts to all Americans making less than $226,982 per year, with the largest cuts going to the poorest individuals. Only the wealthiest 0.1 percent of earners would have to pay more.

McCain’s plan, in contrast, would decrease taxes for all, but the largest decreases would go to the highest-earning bracket of taxpayers, as well as to corporations. The lowest-income Americans would benefit the least from McCain’s tax cuts, with only a 0.2 percent decrease. They’d get a 5.5 percent tax cut under Obama’s plan.

There’s lots of other good, important information at the above link, such as the inevitable downside to McCain’s extreme cuts (if he could even pull them off) and also this handy chart from the Washington Post, based on the two candidates’ plans:

But THIS is even cooler:  Go to this link, put in your family’s filing status, dependents, and Adjusted Gross Income, and – voila! – it spits out what your tax cut (or hike) would be under Obama or McCain.  Generally the vast majority of us, who make under 200,000 a year, get bigger cuts under Obama, those making over 250,000 get bigger cuts under McCain and modest tax hikes under Obama.  I know, the genteel Ron St. John, Esquire, will call this “Eat-the-Rich Socialism.”  But hey – does anybody remember Peace and Prosperity?

(Go up to 4:10 for the relevant moment; how do you edit these videos anyway?)

2. Obama has (apparently) been a Bush foreign policy advisor for the past year [as things have been going better.]

I’ve written two posts here before on this remarkable phenomenon:  Candidates Obama and McCain stake out different positions on a given foreign policy question; with (generally but not always) Obama being more pragmatic and McCain more bellicose;  and as things shake out in the real world, the Bush administration follows the Obama prescription.  (Remember, this is no longer Bush under the sway of the radical neocons who pushed him into Iraq and have now given up on him and are clustering around McCain, but the late-period mellow Bush with grownup advisors Condi Rice and Robert Gates.)

Examples.  (not gonna bother linking, all of this is famous fact, and I’ve got two old posts on the same thing…)

• Obama promises to get our troops out of Iraq on a responsible 16-month framework; McCain repeatedly refers to that as defeat, and makes it quite clear (with plenty of hyperbole) that he would be happy to stay in Iraq indefinitely.  Iraqi leader Maliki insists on a plan very similar to Obama’s, and Bush ends up pretty much giving in to it.
• Obama is mocked by McCain for “saber-rattling” and “naivete” and “giving away our plans to the enemy” for answering in the affirmative as to whether he would cross the border into Pakistan to get Al Qaeda and Osama if he had “actionable intelligence” and Pakistan was “unwilling or unable to act.”  This of course is common wisdom and practice, which Bush himself has done at least four times since that debate; but hawkish McCain in order to attack his opponent has painted himself into a ridiculous corner, now pretending to be absurdly sensitive to Pakistan’s border.  And last week, poor little Governor Palin, using her common-sense noggin, answered a pizza customer with Obama wisdom, for which breach she was taken to the woodshed and given a very gentle spanking by McCain.  (mmm… Stop it, you old goat!)
• Obama was, let’s see, “naive,” “weak on defense,” and an “appeaser” along the lines of “Chamberlain” for saying he would sit down and negotiate with our enemies, specifically Iran.  Not long after, Condi and Co. sat down and, well, “talked” with Iran about our mutual grievances.
• When Russia invaded Georgia a few months ago, a complicated situation with a lot of history and plenty of blame to spread around, McCain jumped at the chance to show his toughness, proclaimed “We are all Georgians!” and sent out his clownish sidekick Senators Lieberman and Graham as his personal emissaries to Georgia’s unhinged demagogue leader, in a faux-Presidential borderline-illegal show of support to one side – the side represented by his lobbyist/aide Randy Scheuneman.  OK, I didn’t mean for that sentence to be so long.  Anyway Obama was called wishy-washy for pointing out the complexities anc callind for diplomacy.  Thank God Bush and his cabinet were listening to Barack!
• Then of course there was the fact that for over a year Obama has been wanting to send two more brigades to Afghanistan to finish the botched job there, while McCain remarked around the same time that we could just “muddle through” in that troubled region while concentrating all our resources on Iraq; a few months ago the commander in Afghanistan requested TWO MORE BRIGADES; and Bush is doing his best to get them there which is difficult while we’re bogged down in Iraq.
• There are probably more examples, but I’m getting tired. Is it okay to start having afternoon naps when you’re 48, or is something wrong with me?  Anyway, settle down you lot, President Obama is going to be fine, and we’re not going to socialism or any kind of appeasement of enemies.  See you at the trainwreck tonight.