A Hilarious and Appalling Performance

The world's greatest orator embarrassingly stumbled this week as he gave a matinee performance in which he endeavored to clamor aboard the deficit reduction train as it was chugging out of the station.

The hilarious aspect of the Obama speech was his assignment of crazy Joe Biden -- who was shown snoozing in the background -- to produce a "bipartisan" deficit reduction program. Even though he was seen to be nodding off while the president was doing this, the vice president doesn't have a nodding acquaintance with the concept of bipartisanship. Throughout his career, he has been notable for three things -- (i) frequent gaffs, (ii) political thoughts spanning the full range from the inane to the insane, and (iii) a remarkably surprising and rare record of consistency -- almost every pronouncement and position he has put forth has turned out to be wrong.

The most appalling aspect of the oration was Mr. Obama's reference to money left in the hands of those who earn it as tax code spending. The horrific underlying assumption of this description is that everything people earn and have really belongs to the government, and therefore anything the government does not confiscate through taxes constitutes an expenditure by the government of assets to which it is entitled.