Okay, here's a little bit of logical thought. Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich...the top 5% of income earners in the United States. He wants to raise their taxes to do the following:

Socialized medicine - medicare, medicaid raise

Defense - War in Iraq

He wants to send income tax refunds to people who never paid income tax, paid for by the top 5%

Pay to fix the social security system that originally counted on the next generation to support the seniors

Pay for an $850 Billion dollar bail out

Pay the national deficit

DOESN'T IT SEEM OBVIOUS TO YOU THAT EITHER THE TOP 5% IS GOING TO GO BANKRUPT OR THE MIDDLE CLASS IS GOING TO BE TAXED OUT OF EXISTENCE AS WELL?

If they manage to pay for all of the things that Obama is going to raise taxes on them to fix, they will no longer have monies to pay their businesses operational expenses.

COMMUNISTS WANT TO MAKE EVERYONE EQUAL. THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH MONEY TO MAKE EVERYONE RICH. SO, LOGICALLY, EVERYONE HAS TO BECOME POOR IN ORDER TO BECOME EQUAL. IN ORDER TO CONTROL THE PEOPLE WHO OBJECT, MORE OFTEN THAN NOT A COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT HAS TO SPY, KILL, TARGET CHILDREN TO TEACH THEM THEIR PHILOSOPHIES, AND TEACH THEM TO SPY AGAINST THEIR PARENTS.

THIS NATION HAS UNDERGONE A TOTAL PHILOSOPHICAL CHANGE REGARDING FREEDOM OF WORSHIP AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH...WHERE DO YOU THINK THAT HAS COME FROM?

COMMUNISTS WANT TO BE IN THE WHITE HOUSE AND IN THE SENATE AND IN THE HOUSE IN THE MAJORITY IN ORDER TO CHANGE OUR CONSTITUTION ALTOGETHER. SOME COUNTRIES WHO LOSE A WAR DON'T GO AWAY...THEY JUST GO ABOUT THEIR WARS IN A DIFFERENT WAY. IN OUR INNOCENCE, AMERICA HAS ALLOWED THEM IN.

Ralph7, is that you?

I don't know about Ralph7, but I thought it was Joe McCarthy's ghost.

I quite like the BOLD ITAL. It's better than regular screaming in bold. Somehow it has a certain "insider" quality that really gets my attention. I have no idea how he did it, but I'm impressed!

Asks a question then goes on a screaming rampage for 30 minutes. Typical pud, doesn't want to know anything. Proud in ignorance.

Your's has been a knee-jerk, first gut level view! I've read some of yours, it's nonsense. You're not trying to understand, so look who is calling others ignorant.

The questions of this thread have all been debunked countless times. The Obama web site has answers, NOT just talking points, but real answers to what this thread has thrown out. Time after time these same questions, inane questions to those of us who have put up with them for months, answered them countless times, linked web site after web site and have shown so many real sources for truth, that it has to be a sociopath who continues on with these questions.

One last thing, MY OPINION!

Taxing the rich 5% is not going to cause them to go bust. Rather it's going to cause them to know what it's like to be an American citizen paying their way. We 95% pay for all those tax breaks! WE PAY OUT THE NOSE for all the strong arm crap the rich white oligarchy spawns upon America!

Why should they be allowed tax breaks to build? WHY?

FUCK THEM!

I'm sick and tired of giving away the farm.

Reagan showed how giving away to the rich will work. It DOESN'T!

FUCK THEM!

SOCIALISM MY BROWN EYE!

MY opinion is very visceral. I will talk to any rich face to face, tell them what I think. Give them evidence of their greed, show them what the poor have to deal with when they get welfare from their tax breaks. FUCKING welfare for the rich will be OVER! DONE! FINISHED!

I'm going to fight this to the end of time!

NO MORE WELFARE FOR THE RICH!

Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich...the top 5% of income earners in the United States...DOESN'T IT SEEM OBVIOUS TO YOU THAT EITHER THE TOP 5% IS GOING TO GO BANKRUPT

Speaking as someone who is in that top 5%, I can tell you there's no way I'm going to go "bankrupt" if my top marginal tax rate is 39.6% (as it was under Clinton) or 35% (as it was after the Bush tax cuts). I will do quite fine either way, thank you.

As for other items:

We have to pay for the war in Iraq somehow. So far we've been borrowing the money. McCain has no plan other than to cut taxes further when we're not already paying our national bills. That sounds like bankruptcy to me. Obama wants to wind down the war and reduce expenses.

We've been sending income tax "refunds" to those who don't pay income tax for several decades now. The idea is to encourage people to work rather than just take welfare. It's actually a conservative idea, and it helps save money.

If the bailout is used wisely, we may get most of it back.

As for the "total philosophical change regarding freedom of worship and freedom of speech," I have seen nothing of the sort. Instead, it's the present administration which has posed the biggest threat to the fundamentals of our government.

Yes, little are your thoughts, but certainly not logical.

The spectres you raise, and the manner they are conflated, echoes and screams out right wing radio.

Do yourself, and your country a service. Read, learn and think. Give expression to American values that you no doubt would claim to accept and follow: excellance, acceptance, pluralism and reason.

I doubt is there's anyone looking to cry for the rich if their taxes go up. I did see Arthur Laffer on CNBC yesterday make the point that so many in the top brackets have options in terms of restructuring how their income is recieved or accounted for that the potential revenue gains are likely to fall well short of most projections, but that's a whole other issue.

I do wish that we could get the discussion reframed away from how the taxes are distributed and more toward exposing the canard that starting from a huge budget deficit, a relatively small tax increase in conjunction with potentially huge spending increases will in any way lead to balancing the budget.

Or is it that they'd rather not shine a light on the increasing probability that they'll just run the printing presses (metaphorically speaking in the age of electronic monetary systems) and hyperinflate our way out of the catastrophic consequences of what happens when a huge pool of public and private debt gets hit by a deflationary tsunami from up to $500Trillion in derivatives unwinding?