You could also read this diary because the stories are entertaining, especially wife Kate’s education about washing fresh vegetables while on a trip, or the insight learned from a visit to an ancient scholar’s study in the classical Chinese pavilion in Vancouver. Or, you could read it to appreciate the writing, noting the sense of flow, appreciating how the parts fit together smoothly, and the sense of focus, observing the clear unity of the whole. There is a simple understated style in this diary—the words don’t shout at you, they don’t compel you—“notice me,” but the writing reflects measured choices, choosing not just what to write but how. The style is not like a translucent window—to be looked through solely for the underlying ideas. It is more like finely cut beveled glass—to be looked at, to be appreciated, to be enjoyed.

This diary also tells of the author’s love of gardening and his writing. But, truth be told, I believe his real passion is eating. A well-prepared meal, one with the right herbs and spices, the freshest produce, and the right combination of dishes, is an event always noted with relish and joy, documenting the pleasure of eating with friends, the opportunity to share events of the day.

“Taking Retirement” deals a pack of anecdotes and lessons. The diary details a psychological journey and an actual vacation trip. The psychological journey includes an enquiry, or polling, of friends, business contacts, associates, and retirees, soliciting their views of retirement, each offering a range of attitudes and responses about retirement, about leaving work and leaving an identity drawn from that work. The vacation puts distance between the author and the start of his first semester, his first semester as an emeritus professor, a professor without fall classes, without students, without colleagues. Professor Klaus’s personal account describes the start of a new life after 35 years of teaching. It records a search for meaning in retirement, a discovery seeking to balance the ship of life, seeking to reconcile conflicts, complete the journey, prepare to move to a new chapter in life.

For President-Elect Obama there is opportunity and risk. It is an opportunity to govern, but a risk of excess by trying to rule from Day One—a characterization used by Valerie Jarrett, Co-Chair Obama Transition Team. It is an opportunity to lead by reason and prudence, but a risk of going beyond his support and advancing his policies by coercion and resentment.

It is an opportunity to change policy, but a risk of over-reaching. Michael Gerson reviews very early mistakes of another President, Bill Clinton, in “Where the Mines Are.” He discusses three tripwires for President-Elect Obama: The first tripwire concerns abortion and bioethics. He also identifies the Fairness Doctrine (eliminating conservative talk radio) and “card check” for unions (eliminating secret ballots) as landmines.

Regarding the tripwire of abortion, President-Elect Obama is more than an advocate of denying care to an infant born of a botched partial-birth abortion procedure. He is, in fact, a champion of the euphonious Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). His promised changes in abortion law and policy are dramatic. In fact, one commentator describes him: “as the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to have ever run on a major party ticket.” 

He has promised that 'the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act’ (known as FOCA). This proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed 'fundamental right' to abortion….In essence, FOCA would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the health-care industry-protections against being forced to participate in the practice of abortion or else lose their jobs. The pro-abortion National Organization for Women has proclaimed with approval that FOCA would 'sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies.'

This Presidential election felt more significant, perhaps because war rages abroad and economic woes lead the headlines at home. Whether President-Elect Obama’s term in office is also a significant one, a Presidential term that is substantial, consequential, and historic, depends on his actions, his policies, and his accomplishments. It depends on whether he avoids those landmines and tripwires that can prematurely terminate any Presidential honeymoon, any feeling of goodwill, and any willingness to work with a new President.

Will President-Elect Obama avoid the tripwire of abortion and bioethics; or will he take the risk, the risk of trying to rule rather than govern; the risk of over-reaching on policy decisions; the risk of going beyond his support and compelling Americans to follow? If his abortion agenda is one of those avoidable landmines that can derail a newly elected President in the first days of his Presidency, as it seems to be, then his decision will be a defining one. 

It was only a brief sojourn, but you were facing social decline (oral sex is not sex), decay (lying and perjury), and degeneration (perpetual war rooms, character attacks, and confidence in the integrity of government). Entropy.  So then, when you began: how were you to make a new beginning? How were you to change the tone? How were you to reverse the order—breathing in life, beginning anew?

And so you began, with ruddy cheeks—with optimism, hope, and a clear vision.  But, to too many, you are the “Shrub.” The journey is longer. The trail is more difficult than expected.  Only the path is clear: creed leads and shapes the end.

And yet, if turned once too often, that turned cheek turns purple, battered, and bloody; and as you keep turning, you travel from bloody, to lonely, to isolated. Perhaps it requires turning too often, but resetting the center means finding the mean, like finding the 50-yard line after going from end zone to end zone.  Despite the blows and the ridicule, resetting the chains, marking a new center, and recapturing civitas(civility, respect for the rights of others, and spontaneous willingness to obey the law): requires more.  And so, in repairing the damage and cauterizing the wound you are turning, perhaps to often, from another unfair and unanswered attack.  The trail is difficult. The journey is long. 

How else will you change the tone?  How else will you restore the model?  Continue by taking the bloody blows, following your creed when duty is clear, setting the new course, resetting the center of discourse. The entropy is advanced and the need for a new centering of tone and discourse means losing support, losing friends, losing—in the near term, but not in the end.

Yes, with the superior wisdom of our postmodern years, we rejected a societal value, over 2000 years old, of discouraging suicide. I heard that in Oregon, they rejected a request from one man for surgery, but suggested they would be glad to “kill him off.” He complained. They caved. Surgery worked, and he is still walking around. But, in parts of Europe now, they don’t even ask “the patients” anymore if they are ready to depart…of course you understand only euphemisms are allowed when we overrule any value or guidance passed down through the generations… they just close the curtains, shut the eyelids, and terminate you. I must admit they have their reasons—it is cheaper for them, you were too old, and putting you out of your misery was the humane thing to do.

These examples from Oregon and Europe illustrate two points about what happens when you welcome the government into your final curtain call. Dignity slips, slides, and glides into a humane death, like after the family horse breaks his leg and grandfather calls the vet—so the vet can put a bullet through his head. And, as William Gass writes in The Doomed in Their Sinking:

Nowadays the significance of a suicide for the suicide and the significance of that suicide for society are seldom the same. If according to the social workers’ comforting cliché, they are often a cry for help, they’re just as frequently a solemn vow of silence.

A long time ago, I fastened on the idea of “raging against the darkness of the night,” rejecting the idea suicide was anything more than an early exit from the drama of life. As for dignity, Webster says it is “the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed; high rank, office, or position; a legal title of nobility or honor.”

I always thought you earned dignity, you earned it by doing an affirmative act, and when it comes to ending it all, a death with dignity was providing an example for others, performing some remarkable act—bravery, perseverance against the odds, not taking yourself out of the game before the umpire called you out—like Socrates refusing an offer from friends to help him escape the hemlock; Thomas Moore refusing to buckle to the dictates of King Henry on a matter of religious conviction; and average Americans who despite their pain, soldier on with grace, without complaint, a ready smile and time for anyone who needs help, like the young boy with the fatal disease raising money for research to help others after him or Tony Snow (the former White House Press Secretary) calmly accepting his fate with a smile on his face, gratitude in his heart for life and for enough notice allowing him time to order things before moving on.

Dignity suggests a reasoned action and suicide a decision under fear, compulsion, or confusion…an absence of reason.

And, O’Reilly should apologize to Governor Palin. Cameron should name names. O’Reilly should send Griff Jenkins with his camera to confront each McCain staffer, demanding a live interview—putting the attacks on the record, aggressively forcing the critics out of the shadows.

Cameron’s tale of Sarah Palin falling apart after reading negative and critical news reports during the campaign doesn’t connect with what we know about the Governor. Sarah’s life story has numerous examples of taking on challenges greater than the East Coast news bias. A starting high school point guard with a fractured ankle, she plays–through the pain—in the State championship. The small town Mayor confronts the established Republican kingmakers in Alaska and knocks them off one by one. And then, after reading a critical column by Peggy Noonan, she falls apart, quickly decompensating into tears and tantrums? And further, looking at another attack, the story about Sarah not knowing Africa was a continent—hasn’t that one been used before on another political candidate?

Note to Bill O’Reilly: this was an all time low segment, “the folks” deserve better.

This new demographic is the illegal voting bloc: all those who aid or act in illegal voter activity. They register or vote more than once. They feel empowered to violate election laws—by assisting the violators (ACORN employees); by donating money under multiple false identities; by transporting others to vote (busing homeless to another state); by violating privacy laws (accessing state files for information against a citizen who ask a question); and by proudly stealing candidate campaign signs. 

Unfortunately, for America, too many Democrats are unwilling to speak out, unwilling to object. They see this growing demographic as a legitimate constituency, a constituency deserving protection; they support it as an evolving part of their electoral battle plan. Supporting these law violators as core constituents marks a descent for a political party—a pursuit of fool’s gold.

Chris Yavelow, an award-winning composer and author, worked for years developing perhaps the most comprehensive linguistics tool for authorship detection--FictionFixer.

He tested the two books allegedly by Barack Obama, his 1995 Dreams From My Father and the 2006 Audacity of Hope, through FictionFixer, concluding “They were written by different people.”

Yavelow cites a score of characteristics that change too conspicuously from one Obama book to the next. Among the characteristics are 3.8 percent use of the passive voice in 1995 to an 8.3 percent use in 2006, the Flesch Reading Ease score, the use of gender words, sentence starters, adverbs, discouraged words, sensory triggers, average words and syllables for non-dialogue sentences, and any number of other characteristics.

Did Obama write Dreams of My Father?  If he didn’t write his memoir, can we determine who did–-was it Bill Ayers—for example?

There are several persuasive and important updates to my last post (where I collected all the early articles) about the investigation by Jack Cashill into the authorship of Obama’s memoir, including:

·         Extensive analysis using “an expert system – FictionFixer—designed to track and analyze more than 250 characteristics of streams of text, in other words: books.”  This analysis offers a comprehensive report that corroborates Cashill’s research about the writing of “Dreams.”  A convincing and compelling analysis, it is an exhaustive look at the many ways this type of detective work answers the question of literary authorship.

·         A compilation described as “a summary of the evidence columnist Jack Cashill has compiled regarding the true authorship of Barack Obama”(many of his links are collected below). Part 7 of the Cashill compilation provides a link to an independent look at what Obama said about writing his book:

7. The preface

Bruce Heiden, classics professor at the Ohio State University, has done an eye-opening analysis of the introduction and preface of "Dreams from My Father" and found this writing a marvel of evasive postmodernism. The former was part of the original 1995 printing of the book, and the preface was added when it was reissued in 2004.

Heiden argues that neither document ever states that Barack Obama, the credited author of "Dreams from My Father," actually wrote the book. The preface skips straight from Obama saying he "went to work" on the book to the book's publication, while the introduction makes a vague gesture toward a writing-like event in saying that the author's interior journey "found its way onto these pages."

Heiden points out many other anomalies in the introduction and preface to "Dreams," which can be found at his weblog.

·         Excerpts from Jack Cashill’s most recent post, Science points to Ayers authorship of Obama's 'Dreams',

At the heart of my message is that Barack Obama is an impostor, the Milli Vanilli of politics , a man who has been lip-synching for the last 13 years to lyrics pre-recorded by, among others, Bill Ayers.

Exhibit A in my testimony is Obama's 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father." The evidence overwhelms the dispassionate observer that Bill Ayers served as chief book doctor on this fulsomely praised persona-builder.

Now, the science is coming in, from a variety of sources, and it confirms a hypothesis that is evident to anyone who cares to look: Obama had substantial help from Ayers.

That much said, there was a general feeling among people interested in this story that the public would need the confirmation of science, and not just from one source.

Fortunately, five different sets of researchers have taken the challenge to test the hypothesis that Ayers was heavily involved in the writing of "Dreams." And although there are admitted limits to this emerging science, the consensus among these researchers is noteworthy.

I am aware of a fifth stylometric analysis, soon to be released, this one from a British scholar of international repute, but here are some quick summaries from the first four. The authors' contact information could be made available on deep background for serious news sources.

"Using the chi-square statistic," observes one professor, "Obama's and Ayers's books were indistinguishable, while Obama's book was easily distinguishable from books by other authors."

Writes another analyst, using his own proprietary software, "There is a strong likelihood that the author of "Fugitive Days" ghost-wrote "Dreams From My Father" using recordings of dialog (either tape recorded or notes). Alternatively, another scenario could be possible: Ayers might have served as a 'book doctor.'"

One systems engineer writes, "The statistical style analysis performed by our research team suggests that the writing style of 'Dreams From My Father' is significantly more similar to the style observed in 'Fugitive Days' than to the style found in other works by Barack Obama such as 'Audacity of Hope.'"

He continues, "Even more interesting, when we extract those sections of 'Dreams From My Father' that Dr. Cashill believes to be Ayers' writing and treat this as a unique document, the style analysis software identifies a stronger correlation between this sample and Ayers' 'Fugitive Days' than we see between this same sample and the remainder of 'Dreams From My Father'! Thus we have reason to believe that 'Dreams From My Father' had at least two authors, and one author's measured style features more closely match those of Ayers than they match those of the other author(s)."

"Under the Q-value statistic," argues one university-based analyst who tested "Dreams" against Ayers' 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days," "segments of 'Dreams' consistently compared as well with 'Fugitive' segments as it did with other segments of 'Dreams' itself. In contrast, 'Dreams' compared poorly with other documents."

Writes another: "The Ayers-Obama matching shows a measurable and substantial effect. It is easily and objectively distinguishable from comparison to a third document. These results achieved through good methodology should readily stimulate scientists skilled in the particular relevant fields to construct their own tests, place objective metrics on the correlation between the Ayers-Obama documents and publish results."

He adds, and I agree, "We strongly think this bears immediate investigation by the academic community at large as the initial data presented is highly suggestive that these two documents share large portions of authorship."

Here is one of the more user-friendly of the studies in pdf format, as well as my summary of the literary detective work that has taken the project this far. Those readers who have influence the media, now is the time to use it.

Related special offers:

"The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality"

"The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama's War on American Values"

Previous commentaries:

"Ayers' role in Obama's 'Dreams' poised to break out"

"Barack Obama: Ayers' alter ego"

"Test shows Ayers penned Obama's 'Dreams'"

"Nautical metaphors could sink Obama"

"Obama didn't write 'Dreams from My Father'"

"Roots' fraud sets standard for Obama's"

"Obama's poems show real talent level"

"More proof Ayers ghosted Obama's 'Dreams'"

Read Cashill's three-part series on Obama's "Dreams":

Part 1, "Bill Ayers' motive for penning memoir"

Part 2, "Deconstructing the text"

Part 3, "Real author of Barack book: Why it matters"

Over the years, the science of authorship analysis has improved significantly. The details and tests reported in the on-going investigation are fascinating.  These include examining the relative writing skill of Obama and Ayers, the use of distinctive verbs, the use of metaphors and similes, sentence length, and an analysis of the relative life stories of both authors.  Dr. Cashill expects additional testing results based on state of the art technology very soon.  

Mr. Cashill is close to concluding (after a lengthy enquiry, linked below) that Barack Obama had help writing “Dreams of My Father” and Bill Ayers wrote much of “Dreams.”

If Bill Ayers wrote Barack Obama’s “Dreams,” -- what else do we not know about Barack Obama?    

Barack Obama’s allies are attacking “Joe the Plumber,” deprecating his dream to buy a small business, ridiculing his goal to earn more than $250,0000 as a plumber, howling about his qualifications, his financial holdings, his lack of contact with reality; and yet, Barack Obama promises to confiscate money from the goal-oriented achievers, the investors and the savers who accumulate a nest egg likethe “Millionaire Next Door” who lives in the home he was born in, drives a ten year old car, encourages his children to finish college, paying for their education without a government subsidized loan; then Obama will redistribute their hard earned money to the complacent who have walked away from their goals and dreams, the underachievers, the non-producers.

Our community organizer, Barack Obama --  marinated in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, dedicated to Lucifer, may not only be the most liberal candidate ever, but also the least transparent -- calls it spreading the wealth around; others, looking at the number of lottery winners bankrupt one year after winning something for nothing -- call it a fantasy ideology. 

The reality -- Senator Obama is the candidate of fantasy, a fantasy ideology, campaigning on ideas that have failed in the past, ideas that have been rejected, ideas never seen to work in the real world: reforming criminal justice for juveniles by eliminating prison sentences and prosecutorial discretion to prosecute juveniles as adults for serious crimes, open borders, one payer medical care endorsed so unfavorably by all those Canadians heading to the United States every year for medical care not available to them in Canada in time to save their lives, and reforming and radicalizing education as he tried to do in Chicago during his service as Chairman on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and as a board member on the Woods Fund, redistributing tens of millions of dollars without visible student improvement, redistributing money towards programs based on a fantasy by proponents such as Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, teaching about grievances and liberation theology, rubbing raw the red and swollen sores of discontent, building a model, a “revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation.”

 “Joe the Plumber” is the everyman; he is the early pioneer pushing into new territory, planning how to reach his goal like so many small business owners: the carpet layers and the contractors and the dry cleaners and the franchise food operators and the chefs; all those who plan to start a business and build it into something of substance for their children and family. Barack Obama wants to stymie that opportunity, suffocating their dreams, preventing savers from accumulating the money to take the next step, creating a make believe world where results are equal for all rather than a world where productivity and merit are rewarded based on results. He wants to turn the ship of state in a radical new direction, in a direction possibly chaotic and violent without any historical evidence of past success. Barack Obama, not Joe the Plumber, is the man living in the fantasy world.

As the story goes:

One night, Nasrudin was on his hands and knees searching for his key in a well-lit area in the centre of the street. Some of his neighbors came to see why Nasrudin was on his hands and knees.

“What are you looking for, Nasrudin?” enquired one of his neighbors.

“My door key,” Nasrudin replied.

The helpful neighbors dropped to their hands and knees and joined Nasrudin in his search for the lost key.

After a long unsuccessful search, one of the neighbors asked: “We’ve looked everywhere. Are you sure you dropped it here?”

Nasrudin answers: “Of course I didn’t drop it here, I dropped it outside my door.”

“Then, why are you looking for it here!”

“Because there is more light here!” responded Nasrudin.

For all those shining their torchlight of commentary on Governor Palin’s accent, her familiar conversational style, her colloquial use of “you betcha,” “doggone it,” and “soccer Mom,” they need to move, just like Nasrudin, to where the work is harder – they should focus on Senator Biden’s debate performance - the content of his  answers. 

Senator Obama selected the Delaware Senator to add weight and balance to his ticket. Joe Biden is his foreign policy expert. The 36 year Senator, a member of the Judiciary Committee and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee allows Barack Obama – a candidate with zero foreign policy experience – to claim he offers a balanced ticket. Unfortunately, Senator Biden gave a performance unworthy of a freshman high school civics student, raising numerous questions about his carefulness, thoughtfulness, and judgment. 

The Fox News Special Report commentator Charles Krauthammer noted seven errors on foreign policy in 60 seconds.  And National Review’s Jim Geraghty at his blog: “the Campaign Spot,” continues updating his list of Biden errors from the debate: “The Biden Error/Lie/Hallucination List (UPDATED to 22).”  His list of errors includes such topics as the role of the Vice President under the Constitution; the range of Pakistani missiles; Barak Obama’s role in West Bank Elections; and the relevance of a McCain vote against “Violence Against Women” legislation when the Supreme Court later ruled the legislation unconstitutional.

The number of errors is troubling; the confident assertiveness while giving so many incorrect answers gives pause for concern – this man could have taught P.T. Barnum a thing or two about audacity. When I review the comments about his answers, I ask myself - What has he been doing in Washington, D.C. for 36 years? Has he learned anything? If this is his best after 36 years, wouldn’t I be better off with a proven governor, a fast study, an outsider at the beginning of a learning curve with significant potential for rapid improvement, an over-achiever like the moose-hunting, point guard in the number two spot?

For me, the Senator’s crowning achievement – talk about a confidence booster that he understands my situation - was his rebuttal to the Wasilla mother of five showing he also knows how Middle America feels. His evidence – he talks to the folks at Katy’s restaurant in Wilmington. Unfortunately, the Senator must reside in a parallel universe (could Geraghty be on to something about hallucinations?) or, more troubling, he hasn’t spoken to an average “Joe Six-Pack” or anyone outside his close circle since 1990 when Katy’s Restaurant closed its doors and went out of business.

Not only is Senator Biden in the dark, but so too are many in the media; unwilling, like the Sufi, to move out from under the light and search through Senator Biden’s answers to expose him for what he is – a caricature of a serious public servant, winging it as he goes along, enjoying the ride in the Senate as much as his subsidized Amtrak commute, all the while proving the Peter Principle is alive and well.

Foreshadowing this breakdown in financial discipline, this gross abandonment of duty, this gorging at the public trough, was the Continuing Resolution passed last week for over $600 billion with over 2,200 earmarks attached and totaling over $6 billion. 

If the financial bailout is critical, if we are facing a financial event comparable to the Great Depression,  if we are on the precipice of financial ruin looking into the abyss, then, is this the best the world’s most deliberative body can do – pile on more spending, congratulating themselves for their action ahead of the House, pushing through their pet provisions, preempting the House Republican alternative, involving less debt for the taxpayer?

At this point, how anyone can believe our political class is fit to lead is beyond me. President Bush, as his term of office comes to a close, says, we are facing critical times – it isn’t the bailout that is critical, however, it is the refusal of elected officials to perform their duties in a responsible manner, their unwillingness to curb their appetite for more money at taxpayer expense, their unwillingness to accept a reality that requires fiscal discipline and setting priorities, their belief they are entitled to an unlimited right to draw upon the public’s funds to push any fantasy ideology they can imagine to create heaven on earth based on government largesse. 

Our next President will begin his term with a very different set of givens than most could have imagined just a year ago. If Senator McCain is serious about changing Washington, if he is serious about being a reformer, if he is serious about eliminating earmarks, the Republican Presidential nominee from Arizona needs to start making earmark piggy’s – especially those who have moved beyond earmarks as a gateway drug to an addiction – famous. Now.

Foreshadowing this breakdown in financial discipline, this gross abandonment of duty, this gorging at the public trough, was the Continuing Resolution passed last week for over $600 billion with over 2,200 earmarks attached and totaling over $6 billion. 

If the financial bailout is critical, if we are facing a financial event comparable to the Great Depression,  if we are on the precipice of financial ruin looking into the abyss, then, is this the best the world’s most deliberative body can do – pile on more spending, congratulating themselves for their action ahead of the House, pushing through their pet provisions, preempting the House Republican alternative, involving less debt for the taxpayer?

At this point, how anyone can believe our political class is fit to lead is beyond me. President Bush, as his term of office comes to a close, says, we are facing critical times – it isn’t the bailout that is critical, however, it is the refusal of elected officials to perform their duties in a responsible manner, their unwillingness to curb their appetite for more money at taxpayer expense, their unwillingness to accept a reality that requires fiscal discipline and setting priorities, their belief they are entitled to an unlimited right to draw upon the public’s funds to push any fantasy ideology they can imagine to create heaven on earth based on government largesse. 

Our next President will begin his term with a very different set of givens than most could have imagined just a year ago. If Senator McCain is serious about changing Washington, if he is serious about being a reformer, if he is serious about eliminating earmarks, the Republican Presidential nominee from Arizona needs to start making earmark piggy’s – especially those who have moved beyond earmarks as a gateway drug to an addiction – famous. Now.

Using the states as a laboratory, applying a competitive index to examine 16 variables for ranking the states, Graham and Solon concluded - growth in jobs, income and population were critical elements if a state were to prosper. They learned that the top three states were Texas, Florida and Arizona; noting, remarkably, “a third of all new jobs created in the last ten years were in these three states.” On the other hand, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio were the three least successful states, demonstrating that governance, taxes, and regulatory policy matter. Their conclusion is evident; the title of the article is “If You Like Michigan’s Economy, You’ll Love Obama’s.”

Repeated calls for tax cuts for the middle class are unmasked as unreal and imaginary in “Tax Cuts, Real and Imaginary, Obama's spending programs in disguise.” Gingrich and Ferrara  noting the Obama tax cut for 95% of American’s is a false promise, a deceptive ploy to transfer income from those who pay taxes to the 40% who no longer pay any share of the income tax; the top 10 percent paying 71 percent of the federal income tax though earning just 39 percent of the nation's pretax income; the bottom 60 percent of income earners together, on net, paying less than 1 percent of all federal income taxes while these workers earn 26 percent of national income.

In a third article, “Seeing through Obamanomics,” Jeff Jacoby argues that the declining number of Americans who have confidence that Barack Obama can do a better job handling the economy suggest that more Americans are beginning to understand the confiscatory, compulsory, and corroding effects of an Obama income re-distribution scheme.