It’s tax day! Unlike tax days of past years this one has drawn (as of the time of this post) roughly 194k protestors showing their disdain for the out of control government spending, bailouts, and of course Taxes.

You’d think that a true grassroots populist movement would stoak the hearts of the left. But no, standing on the shoulders of their classy leader’s preference for “retard” jokes. The left and the MSM delved into juvenile gutter humor mocking the protests with a term more commonly used in reference to a sex act.

First we have Anderson Cooper, illustrating why CNN is no longer a trusted news source.

Maybe he should have stayed on Channel 1 where the high-school children it’s shown to would be a more appropriate audience for his sophisticated humor?

Next up we have Rachel Maddow illustrating why MSNBC never was considered a “news source”

Hmm… I mean.. yea.. Totally excercising that “sophistication”

On the flip side of criticism I see that  Paul Begala is trying to use Straw Man  ”Original Tea Party” equivalences to try to discredit the very real populist outrage.

So why are a bunch of Fox News clowns and right-wing cranks hosting “tea parties” all over the country? The Boston Tea Party, in case the clods at Fox didn’t know it, protested “taxation without representation.” Note the second word: without. The goofballs tossing tea bags today have representation. They voted in the election; they lost.

Really not that big I swear.

But look at least Begala is brining up the point that Paying taxes is Patriotic.

But for the rest of us, the civilian majority, our government asks very little. Except for April 15. On this day, our government asks that we pay our fair share of taxes to keep our beloved country strong and safe.

Not one single dime. Obama’s words on raising taxes on the poor. The AP points out another campaign promise that wasn’t quite kept.

The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama’s promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.

This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.

To be sure, Obama’s tax promises in last year’s campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.

“I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

There is a nice video over at the Post Gazette interviewing people stocking up on cigarettes before the tax.  If smoking weren’t addictive, i’d be less upset.

I’m wondering if this increase will cause enough people to quit that tax revenues will decline. That’d be sweet.

It would appear that someone is finally paying attention:

Mr. Obama, who initially said he welcomed the effort by Congress to tax bonuses, is now taking a more measured approach. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said the administration would have to consider the impact of the legislation on its wider efforts to prop up banks and increase the flow of consumer credit to families and small businesses.

Personally, if I had accepted TARP money and then had rules applied to it after I had already considered and weighed the risks and accepted it I’d be pissed.  Actions like this can help make accepting future bail outs harder… though Since I oppose the bailouts anyway… ugh. Go Congress?

Yes I know Kelo is old news, but the video is nice and Cato just posted it.   Btw.  Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer  were the judges.

The CBO is predicting that Obama’s budget will spiral our country’s debt to 9.3 TRILLION dollars over the next 10 years. This is a paltry 2.3 TRILLION dollars worse than the Administrations prediction:

President Barack Obama’s budget would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade, more than four times the deficits of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency, congressional auditors said Friday.

Mr. President! Please, read your own website:

Barack Obama will restore fiscal discipline to Washington:
Obama and Biden review the federal budget line by line and eliminate programs that don’t work or are unnecessary.

This is way too cool to pass up.

The 20-year old photo depicts two world leaders - US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev - in Moscow.

But, according to the man who took the photo, it also captures Mr Putin disguised as a tourist.

But… there is a little doubt

But, while acknowledging this practice, a Russian political analyst and author of books on Vladimir Putin dismissed Mr Souza’s claims as “nonsense”.

“Vladimir Putin was a major serving in Dresden and he wasn’t important enough at that time to be brought to Moscow”, said Andrey Piontkovsky.

Ok yea. The  cold war used to be over, Putin is scarier than anyone I can think of, but this is just damned cool.

House Panel: TARP Firms Have Unpaid Tax Bills

A House Ways and Means investigative subcommittee has found that of the 23 largest recipients of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds, the majority have unpaid tax bills. As many as 13 financial institutions owe a combined $220 million, while two individual firms owe in excess of $100 million each to the IRS, the panel found. The committee said it cannot disclose the names of the companies. “To get money from Treasury, banks and others must sign a contract that states they have no material unpaid taxes. Treasury did not ask these banks and companies to turn over their tax records. Treasury relied on the signed statements when it agreed to invest billions of taxpayer dollars,” said House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman John Lewis, D-Ga. “This is shameful. It is a disgrace. The American people are fed up, they are fired up, and they’re not going to take it anymore 

It’s a bad news cycle for those in charge isn’t it?

First Dodd said AIG could keep retention bonuses via the loophole that he added, then he denied it, now he admits it and CNN amongst others are calling him a liar

BASH: I know Wolf has some questions. But if I could just follow up, just on this point, you were very adamant yesterday, very adamant that you didn’t know how this change got in there. And now you are saying that your staff did work with the administration.

DODD: Well, going back and looking — and obviously, I apologize to Ted and so forth, but the date is only significant to the extent, could it be modified. And the provisions we insisted upon, as even part of that discussion, was that the secretary, if in fact the law was inconsistent with those bonuses, are contrary to public interest, which I believe this is, and ironically it’s the administration relying on that section which is using that as a means by which they can reach back and try to get at these bonuses, which I’m confident we will.

So I’m very proud of the fact we wrote the language. Had we not written it, it wouldn’t be — we’d be debating (CROSSTALK) …

BASH: But you did agree to modify this, to put that clause in?

Specter declares he’s running as a Republican

“To eliminate any doubt, I am a Republican and I am running for re-election in 2010 as a Republican on the Republican ticket,” Specter said in a statement.

Though he did qualify the idea of being an “I” with:

He added: “I’m not really giving it any thought at all. It is a possibility in the sense that almost anything is a possibility. But I’m not planning to run as an independent.”

h/t Grassrootpa

Karl Rove has a new Opinion piece out in the Wall Street Journal. It outlines the President’s failings and broken promises thus far rather nicely.

For example, Team Obama thinks the president, having spent a good portion of the campaign decrying the $2.9 trillion in deficits during the Bush years, can now double the national debt held by the public in 10 years. Having condemned earmarks during the campaign, the Obama administration now believes it can wave through 8,500 of them in the omnibus-spending bill, part of the biggest spending increase since World War II.

With the Dow at 7,486 and unemployment at 8.1%, Mr. Obama says the economy is fundamentally sound. Does he suppose the nation won’t recall him attacking John McCain last September for saying the same thing — when the Dow was at 11,000 and unemployment at 6.2%?

Candidate Obama vowed to end “the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics.” Yet his administration geared up MoveOn.org to lead a left-wing coalition to pressure Republicans and centrist Democrats, organized a daily conference call to coordinate liberal attack dogs, and strategized with Americans United for Change on ads depicting the GOP as the party of “no.”

If only there were an effective GOP that could seize upon this and get the message out there….

Republicans sense the opportunity. The House GOP leadership deputized the top Budget Committee Republican, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, to prepare an alternative budget. The GOP budget won’t raise taxes, gets spending and debt under control, and will result in a stronger economy with more jobs. House Republicans plan a major selling effort back home during the coming recess. Minority Leader John Boehner is already up on YouTube extolling the plan.