Hey Trev, I don't think the McCain ticket is really in a great position. Sure, they've meneged to move up in the polls, but since when have the polls really been accurate? The electoral college is what determines the next President, and I think the Obama camp has the advantage there as well.
I am not anxious to see yet another conservative on the Supreme Court. I am not interested in overturning Roe v. Wade, a constitutional amendment on the issue of marriage
Well, I guess it all depends on what sticks in your craw the most. For me there are far more important matters that the next President needs to address. First and foremost would be the current energy crisis and the war in Iraq. For me, I don't see Obama making wise decisions in these areas. Not only because of his lack of experiences, but because he hasn't made the right decisions thus far. He is only recently starting to back down on his former positions against drilling, and he got it all wrong on the surge, whereas McCain got it right. Further, Obama’s solutions seem to be throwing money at problems. This is typical democrat philosophy which is why they earned the reputation for big government and pork barrel spending. Obama wants the federal government to be a giant welfare system for people who don’t work. His policies will continue to drive employers out of the country, which will only agitate the situation more.
the dissolution of employer-provided healthcare
Its dissolution? I haven't heard that. But I do understand that the entire concept of employer-provided healthcare began as an incentive for businesses to lure qualified applicants from other companies. It became a popular benefit providing technique which was gradually adopted by most businesses, and over time people got used to the idea and eventually they felt entitled to it as if it were their right; especially minorities who were working for low-paying companies that couldn’t afford to provide these benefits. But there is nothing in the constitution that says companies are obligated to pay for their employees' healthcare.
tax cuts for the wealthy
I think this is a misleading canard that requires more understanding of the conservative philosophy. Do we really believe conservatives just love to see the rich get richer? I mean is that really what it amounts to, or is there an economical plan in mind here? The fact is America’s corporate tax rate is 39%, second only to Japan. Because of this businesses are moving out of the country. This has an effect on the job market because naturally Americans are not going to be working for companies located in Indonesia. So we see a tremendous amount of jobs lost. To be sure, private businesses give America its jobs, not the government. Obama doesn’t understand this. And you would be surprised to know how many politicians don’t actually know the facts and figures regarding what percentage of the people actually pay taxes:
Congressman Dennis Kucinich thinks that the top 1% of income earners earns about 60% of all income, and he thinks that they pay about 15% of all income taxes. The fact is that the top 1% of all income earners pull in about 18% of all income and pay 38.8% of all income taxes.
This is an astounding level of ignorance on such an important statistic. You can excuse a mother of three loading up on Happy Meals for her porky little kids at a McDonalds for not knowing this .. .but a member of the Congress? Remember .. the Clinton tax increase passed the House of Representatives by only one vote ... and Kucinich was there ... there without a clue ... there voting for a tax increase on people he thought earned 60% of all the income but were only paying 15% of all income taxes. Inexcusable. –
http://boortz.com/nuze/200801/01092008.html#kucinich
an invasion of Iran
Obama has made his case that Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear program and he said quite explicitly that military action will not be taken off the table. How is this any different from what George Bush has said? If anyone is inclined to back away from invasion, I think it would be Palin/McCain. Governor Palin made it explicitly clear that diplomatic solutions must first be exhausted before military options are entertained, and she also stated several times that she hates war. Of course these comments were edited out of her interview on ABC because the media is trying to mold Palin in an image that fits their preconceptions, but the point is there is no evidence that McCain would be any more inclined to "invade" Iran than would Obama.
Maybe you can tell me why I shouldn't be concerned
We should all be concerned with these issues, but misguided concern based on misinformation is something we should all be trying to remedy.
What amazes me is how utterly surreal the rhetoric of presidential campaigning has become. I sympathize with your sense that many of the attacks on Palin are puerile nonsense, but I think the repeated allusions to Obama and Osama in the same breath on Fox were also stupid and slimy. It is too bad that all of this garbage has been, and continues to be, so effective.
I don’t think there is any real comparison between Fox and CNN. Aside from Sean Hannity, Fox seems to be far more balanced than CNN or MSNBC. They don’t invent scandals out of thin air in order to attack Obama. But the Osama = Obama gaffe has been repeated in various venues. Hell, even Ted Kennedy accidentally called Obama Osama. (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APx2YJ-_jos)
Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald, on the front page, actually published Obama’s name as Osama!
And even MSNBC accidentally put up a photo of Osama when Chris Matthews was speaking on Obama: (
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/Te ... cle/305447)
So when these news outlets do this it is just a mistake. But when FOX says it, it is stupid and slimy? You have to admit how easy it is to make this error.
With regards to our current situation with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the reason they went bankrupt was because people could not pay off their home loans. Why were these banks giving loans to people who clearly were not able to pay? Because of people like Barack Obama, who thinks corporate America is a monster deserving to be robbed, as if it is a money tree that doesn’t give to his “community” because it is racist or what not.
Obama represented Calvin Roberson in a 1994 lawsuit against Citibank, charging the bank systematically denied mortgages to African-American applicants and others from minority neighborhoods…
One of the few cases where Obama was an attorney of record during his community organizer days was suing Citibank for its failure to issue more subprime loans. This influential case filed in 1994, Bucks-Roberson v. Citibank, was straight out of the ACORN playbook, and indeed Obama’s attack was just one in an ongoing assault against Citi by ACORN and its sympathizers.
Evidence of the ACORN assault includes the 1992 occupation of Citi headquarters in New York. (AP Online, July 14, 1992) Citi became Obama’s target in the July, 1994 lawsuit, which surely played a role in a Sept. 20, 2004 press release, “Citigroup and ACORN Expand Access to Financial Services in Communities Around the Country.” The release trumpeted, “With this agreement, ACORN will be able to expand our mission of strengthening communities by helping low- and moderate-income families…become homeowners.” In a related development, the Chicago Tribune from Sept. 11, 1994 declared “ACORN has enhanced its financial power through a pilot program with the Federal National Mortgage Corp., called Fannie Mae. The program links investors with ACORN to make mortgage money available to needy buyers.” Worthy polices, to be sure, but the sloppy implementation forced by Obama and his fellow travelers directly lead to the current financial crisis. According to the WSJ, the subprime driven takeover of Fan and Fred, could cost taxpayers $500B. Citi has already needed to raise $30B in new capital as a result of the subprime crisis. The total costs to the US economy of Obama’s signature economic plan are catastrophically high.
Although a junior lawyer on the team, Obama’s role in orchestrating the subprime crisis cannot be said to be just a hired gun, the mercenary attorney looking for the big class action settlement. Obama has been affiliated in one form or another with ACORN for 20 years - since before he went to law school, and has their endorsement in this election. After graduation, he came back to Chicago, and went to work advancing ACORN’s agenda through the courts. Obama’s representational record in Westlaw is almost certainly incomplete, as it will only capture cases in which an opinion is given. This will exclude, for example, most cases that settle unless there is some intervening decision by the court captured by the court reporters.
Westlaw captures six cases where Obama was an attorney of record. In two of them, ACORN was his client. In Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank, clearly inspired by ACORN but financed by a $950,000 attorneys fee, Barack Obama shows himself to be an intellectual author and a direct cause of market crisis of 2007-2008. -
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obam ... red-lining
Now on the flip side, McCain and Bush both foresaw this train wreck waiting to happen, five years ago. Here is the NYT article from 2003 where he rightly says the system is "broken":
The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac --
are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the
ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
''I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,'' Mr. Watt said.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... nted=print
See how the Democrats responded? They insisted this was just a "shell-game" proposed by the republicans and that these companies weren't really in a crisis at all. That is essentially how Obama thinks as well, and it makes sense because he spent a good portion of his life trying to make these companies give out unsecured loans to those who couldn't pay.
Now watch the democrats today try to exploit this latest tragedy as evidence that we need to put Obama in office! They'll never admit credit for their part in making this happen.
And here is McCain’s appeal to congress on the matter two years ago:
For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.
I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. -
http://tinyurl.com/5t3jts
Looks like McCain was right again. Obama foresaw nothing because he was happy to see these evil companies forking out loans to people who couldn't repay them. So given Obama and McCain’s roles, who was better prepared to lead us on the economy?
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein