Obama in Wonderland

President Obama recently offered a 17 minute, rambling, non-responsive response to a worker who complained about being overtaxed.

"Obama started out feisty. "Well, let's talk about that, because this is an area where there's been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I'm going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have," the president said.

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer - more than 2,500 words long -- wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, "F-Map"). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as "FICA")."

Obama's response to the questioner can be distilled down to six words: Shut up and pay your taxes.

The fascinating part is that he doesn't even pretend to be sympathetic to anyone that feels they are either paying too much in taxes or believe they do not get sufficient value for the taxes they do pay.

Obama's response is actually very appropriate in that it comes from a person who identifies with and now personifies Big Government, and believes that he can and should be given most of the fruits of your labor to spend as he sees fit.