So Obama says he's cutting taxes for 95% of Americans. Presumably being one of those 95%, I suddenly find myself feeling "not so fresh" in my support of McCain. Then I find out what the Democrats call a tax cut is not at all what the rest of us think is a tax cut. Jerry Pournell put it much more succinctly:

Obama's "Tax cut" will actually be a payment to a rather large number of "taxpayers". That is, anyone who sends in an income tax form is considered a taxpayer; but about 40% of those pay nothing. Some number of that 40% actually receive a "refund" although they didn't actually have taxes withheld; it's called "earned income credit" although how that income was "earned" is not clear to me.

Tell me Obama's cutting my taxes and hey, I'm all for it. Tell me he's going to take more of my money but give more of it back later and while it sounds icky, yeah, I guess I'm still with him. It's only when I realize what he's really going to do is take more of my money and give it to other people, people who won't be paying any taxes at all anyway and that's when I start having a big, fat, hairy problem with his idea. That's when it starts sounding a lot less like government being nice to me and a lot more like government knows best for me. That's when it starts to sound a whole heaping bunch like he's taking my money away and using it to provide even more benefits for people who won't stop having babies and who won't get a job.

In other words, it makes him sound a whole lot less like a reasonable, charismatic moderate and a whole lot more like the old fashioned big-city political boss people who've been paying attention have been calling him all along. In other words, a Democrat.

See? Feeling fresh and clean now, eh?

Like Joe the Plumber, ACORN, and Ayers, this one seems to be sticking. Will it be enough? It just... just... might.

Via, in various ways, Instapundit.