I sat through the president’s entire State of the Union speech Tuesday evening. I’ll probably get some kind of award for doing that because the TV ratings were the lowest for an Obama SOTU speech to date. It was on par with the ratings for George W’s last one in 2008 when his approval ratings were in the 35% range.

The American people are finally starting to tune Mr. Obama out. Winston Churchill once said, “The Americans will always do the right thing…after they have exhausted all the alternatives.”

The contents of the speech were exactly as expected, another victory lap for killing Osama Bin Laden, higher taxes, more spending, more debt and even bigger government. It was basically a rerun of his SOTU speech from 2011, which was a rerun of 2010. Even many of the same phrases were used.

The fact-checkers are having a field day pointing out all the exaggerations and outright lies, but I want to concentrate on the most egregious one, the so-called Buffet Rule.

By now, everyone is familiar with the tactics of class warfare Obama has decided to unleash as his re-election strategy. If the millionaires and billionaires would only pay their fair share, we wouldn’t need to layoff teachers, police, firefighters and blah, blah, blah.

To further his point, he gets billionaire Warren Buffet to say how it’s so unfair that he pays less in taxes than his secretary. Well, if that were really true, it would be outrageous. However, the fact is that it’s not true. The president knows it’s not true, but he’s betting his re-election on the premise that most voters are too stupid to understand that he’s lying to them.

Mr. Buffet doesn’t take a salary like his secretary does. If he did, and he surely could if he wanted to, he would pay 35% of it in income taxes. Buffet didn’t become a billionaire by being stupid. He takes his income on his investments which are taxed at the long-term capital gains rate of 15%. Remember, when he originally earned the money he is now using to invest, he paid income taxes on it. What Obama doesn’t think you’re smart enough to figure out is Buffet has paid taxes on the money twice. The first time at about 35% and the second time at 15%.

Obama announced in his speech that he wants to double the long-term capital gains rate to 30% so the rich pay their “fair share”. Of course, he knows congress will not pass such a bill, because it would stifle investment, crash the stock market and send the already fragile economy into a depression. Even most Democrats wouldn’t support it. Obama knows this to be true and if he were still a senator (wishful thinking) even he wouldn’t vote for it.

He’s only proposing it for one reason. It’s a populist message that he thinks will get him re-elected. He wants to be seen as the man of the people, the working class. If people are stupid enough to think that some people are poor because other people are rich, they’ll vote for him. It’s classic class warfare, and Karl Marx would be proud.

By the way, did you notice Warren Buffet’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek was sitting with the first lady at the speech? She was used as Obama’s prop to drive home the point of  the “little person” paying a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss. I bet most viewers didn’t know that Debbie (we’re on a first name basis) makes a salary of between $200,000 and $500,000 for her duties as Buffet’s secretary according to Forbes.

The only reason I would ever feel sorry for Debbie Bosanek is because she was held captive through Obama’s entire speech. At least I was able to yell at my TV.

Tagged as: state of the union