Video: Obama for Beginners

posted at 7:00 pm on October 27, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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A new group named It’s My Money has a two-minute web ad against Barack Obama specifically aimed at younger voters. It’s clever, but at two minutes, will people sit through it?

It breaks down some of the economic arguments into easier bite-sized chunks, but it may put off more sophisticated viewers. The animation is easy to underestimate; watch the expression on the Obama supporters when Obama’s plan gets explained to them. The global-poverty initiative may come a surprise even for people who have paid attention to the race. Accuracy in Media covered it in February, when Democrats tried to move it out of committee:

A nice-sounding bill called the “Global Poverty Act,” sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.

Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not endorsed either Senator Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. But on Thursday, February 14, he is trying to rush Obama’s “Global Poverty Act” (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.

The bill, which is item number four on the committee’s business meeting agenda, passed the House by a voice vote last year because most members didn’t realize what was in it. Congressional sponsors have been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that it would require. According to the website of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, no hearings have been held on the Obama bill in that body.

That’s the origin of the $845 billion figure. We spend about $3 trillion a year already on the entire federal budget, and that will add another $70 billion of funding for other governments on our already-bloated government. Most Americans figure we spend too much as it is — and that’s on ourselves.

Perhaps this will explain Obama’s redistributionist tendencies even better than his WBEZ interview. And it’s a lot quicker to the point, too.

Update: Apparently, Barack Obama’s aiming even younger, as Charles at LGF discovers:

The Obama campaign’s attempted use of children to influence their parents is absolutely open and blatant. Why doesn’t this outrage people? This is political cynicism of an amazing degree.

I’d say that anyone who isn’t bright enough to explain their vote to their parents without the silly Do’s and Don’t’s lists from the Obama campaign probably won’t make a very good argument anyway. It’s also more than a little presumptuous to think that parents and grandparents can’t decide on their own how to vote, and that it takes the kids to explain things to them. Maybe Team O has watched too many sitcoms and confused TV with reality.

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