A couple of threads ago, I posted a video-link proof, of the lynch-mob mentality that is indicative of the McCain-Palin support base (you know, the one showing idiots at their rally yelling "terrorist" and "kill him!"), and about how I'v long-maintained that the thinking-processes of these people are, at best, operating on a simplistic/racial/bloodthirst level. Well, here's the most recent example of what passes for "informed, rational, political discourse" amongst their quaint little following:
I think Palin probably feels right at home with that crowd, because its just like church, but I bet McCain gets a little freaked out, and gets flashbacks because he hasn't seen people like that since Nam.
I remember less than five years ago I was standing in my back yard talking to my neighbor about good ole GWB and his friends... I said that if he was re-elected he would bankrupt the country and destroy the economy, and that a nations strength is not its weapons, but its wealth, and NAFTA, and outsourcing, and trade imbalance, and oil, and yada, yada, yada.
She said well maybe but, yada, yada, yada... and on it goes...
I will give McCain credit for admitting that the Republican party is 90% to blame for the titanic national debt. He may be crazy about war, but he got that one right, and here is the proof: http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
Canuck, I think that's a very unfair assessment of McCain's base. Just because people are very discontented with the Bush adminstration, such as myself, that doesn't mean that they are willing to hand the presidency over to someone who not only lacks the experience to be leader of the free world, but who is also going to necessarily take a substantial step toward socialism. Not to mention that when I hear Obama talk about foreign policy, I can't help but envision a student fresh out of business school attempting to lecture the Fortune 500 CEO who's been in the game for 30 years.
Make no mistake about it: there is plenty of ammunitition to go after McCain as well, but McCain is the lesser of two evils so far as I'm concerned. Therefore, to paint all of the McCain base as rednecks or reactionists is just plain stupid: there are many, many Americans who support McCain for this very reason.
Actually, you raised a couple of interesting points.
But you failed to take note of something, here:
Dude....the CURRENT Administration has already TAKEN the steps into "socialism" (bail-outs, buying up bad debt, direct government intervention, etc.) and McCain is advocating the SAME thing, if not more! he even said so at the last debate. He has a "new plan", wherein HE would basically have the government buy up all the lousy mortgages. HE SAID THAT.
Well, I can't argue with you there. I was very much appalled by McCain's plan to "adjust the principal's" of bad mortgages. Biden stated as much during the VP debate as well. And no doubt about it, Bush has spent money like a drunken sailor and has dramatically increased the size and scope of government during the last 8 years.
But Obama wants to make the progressive income tax EVEN further progressive...interestingly enough, Obama himself got rich while the Bush tax cuts were in effect, yet he proposes to make it harder for others to get rich. There's something inherently hypocritical about that. Also, he claims his tax proposals will help balance the budget...but he proposes some $1 trillion in new spending and he has yet to show where he proposes to slash spending. Granted, if he ends the Iraq War immediately, that would amount to a huge savings. But I fear that the "Most Liberal Senator of 2007" will find a way to spend these savings...it's just the nature of the beast, I suppose.
The foregoing is just the tip of the iceberg, really. We are in dire need of change, I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't see that Obama is the right man to do it...I dunno, perhaps we are just screwed, regardless.
I can see where you're coming from, but we have to be realistic here:
Obama has CLEARLY said where he intends to get the money for his spending plans, many times.
As for taxation, he's made that equally clear as well: you make above THIS amount of money, then you pay THIS tax rate (I believe his quote was $250,000 salary per year); you make $42,000 up to 250,000......you see NO tax increase). The wealthy will STILL stay wealthy, and the the wannabe-wealthies will STILL have a shot at it. Basically, from what I gather, his philosophy boils down to making the way-better-off shoulder their fair share.
Currently, something like 5 to 10 per cent percent of the nations wealthy, own 90 per cent of the entire nations wealth.
That sound right to you? Morally or ethically?
And you want yet more examples of the mentality that's behind the McCain camp?:
Notice in each clip the SIMILARITIES between these total strangers, who support the same cause/candidate?: Theer is always the same, strong current of hate, bigotry, hostility, narrow-mindedness coming from them. Without fail. How many more examples of this is required, before one can look at it and say, "Yup...we see a pattern here."
I dunno.
I hope you're wrong about being "screwed". Because if YOUR country and its economy are "screwed"......then we're ALL screwed.
You seem like a reasonable sort ( I mean that, truly I do), so maybe YOU can explain something to me, because to be quite honest...I don't get something here:
In all of the history of ANY armed conflict that the U.S. has been involved with in the past, various Presidents knew that waging war is a VERY expensive business. Hence, it was necessary to raise taxes, to pay for them. One of the Republicans BIGGEST claim-to-fame (well, at least THESE Republicans) is "NO HIGHER TAXES!! PERIOD!" NOw...here's what I don;t get: There are at least TWO overt wars going on right now. Big ones, that ain't stopping. The Republicans keep ballyhooing about not raising taxes.
How the christ are they gonna pay for these conflicts???? Or, rather.....how did they FIGURE they WOULD pay for them?
C - that video is very depressing. It shows what happens when religion and politics are controlled by the elite. They have their army of ignorance unified in common hatred of whoever they are told to hate.
more like the holy roman empire.. crusades into the middle east, crushing taxation (for the little guy) complete suspension of reason for religious convictions...that coincidentally benefitted a few at the expense of the rest...
C - Yes depressing. Brevity forces a less than concise description, but the selfish and greedy forces (usually the elite), that engineer a social environment to provide power and wealth to themselves, is at the cost of generations of ignorance (intellect unfulfilled). The ignorance breeds poverty, and poverty breeds anger, and anger opens the door to extremism.
I feel depressed when any life is unfulfilled due to the influence of power. It need not be so, and all could reach even a minor plateau of achievement and awareness if that power were aimed toward the good of all and not the few.
But it is always the most ill informed who will have power over the many, because that is the human condition. As Lincoln said we should "Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. ... as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Will all of humanity ever pull itself up from the dark muck of barbarism?
McCain will lead the country to socialism only slightly slower than Obama...
What can we do? Possibly if Obama wins, and the nation sees the true socialist policies implemented, that America would take a hard right in 2012. But I think America is already headed down that slippery goose-shit covered slope.
Canuck, I actually agree with you on one point. In time of war, taxes should go up to help pay for it. Americans should be asked to sacrifice. However, it should be a simple and seperate war tax, that goes away when the war is over, and would also help make the war go away.
I've said this before, that the US budget should always be balanced, except possibly in time of war or severe national emergency. Racking up national debt should be a last resort, that I fear Bush (and congress which passed the budget) jumped on far too easily.
However, at the same time, domestic spending must be maintained at the current level, or reduced! The current system allows so many earmarks to pay for bullshit local projects, to bribe politicians votes, that controlling federal spending is impossible.
If they shut down the imports this will just drive down the economy even more. Most of the stuff can no longer be produced inside the ountry, the infrastructure is simple not there any more. And with the current financial crisis there is no way any companies can set up production in short term.
If our friends in the US vote for Palin/McCain you are going to get what you deserve.
Bush Republican Pay-Off Politics .
Please guys before you vote
THINK ABOUT YOUR FUTURE.....
We have a similar problem in Canada .
Vote for the old liberal party that's GOING TO BURY US IN DEPT.
NDP run by a political family that wants to tax business up the Kazoo.
Now we have the green party some good ideas but we all have to live on a farm to survive.
To day we found out its costing us billions to be in Afganiston.
Here is what I suggest, give each terrorist in Afganistan a $125,000.00 he will go to China and fuck himself silly and gamble the rest away. He will get aids from the chinese whores and die in two years and thats the end of the taliban.
hello podster .... although the bush crime family lists the national debt as being incredibly high, things are actually worse ...... . The following statistics a the are from the offficial U.S. Financial Report, released by the Treasury Department:
The true national debt is $49 trillion, not the $8.3 trillion Bush reported ....= apx $375,000 for every working American
This figure has more than doubled in the past five years... .....the true 2005 deficit was $760 billion, not the $318.5 billion Bush reported ...a responsible taxpayer might ask why such a large discrepancy?....the answer is creative accounting.... unlike you and me, the government uses "cash" instead of "accrual" accounting. This means that the government does not report future spending promises like Medicare and Social Security, veterans' benefits, money promised for education or future infrastructure improvements etc ...
the only elected official who dares to mention it is Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN), undergraduate degree from UNC @ Chapel Hill, Rhodes Scholar @ Oxford (economics)....J.D. Harvard Law..... he knows what he's talking about. naturally he is detested by the right wing bloggers and the GOP in general ...
pods we are in deep shit in Canada, today in the news the president of the union for city employees . Who is a city gardener quit he will get a whooping $100,000 indexed pension, all his medical and for his family too.
He will get all his accumulated sick days and vacation pay when he leaves another 9 months salary.
He will also keep his job at the union another huge amount. This crap goes on and on.
Toronto city clerks who do maybe 60 minutes of work each 8 hour day get $72,000 plus a 3% raise each year. All they have to do is show up . This is why we are loosing the battle . I can go on but it is pissing me off.
I run a small kitchen company that is competing with Chinese products that cost one tenth of what it cost made in Canada.
It is getting harder to sell Canadian made products .
We also have a huge new Chinese immigrant population in BC about 40% bringing over their crap.
We give them passports then they return to China.
We canadians do this for every immigrant and most want to cross the border and fuck you up, or return to their countries with our passport for protection.
My next door neighbour brought his Yugoslavian mother and father over to Canada . They are 75 and 76 years old since they arrived they have been in and out of our FREE hospitals with scores of Free medical tests and one operation [Free]. They have not contributed ONE DIME to this country . This is happening over and over again. SAD Sorry I just came back from a trip to the US and listen to the doom and gloom plus stupid politics
CM it is the same down here. Entitlements are killing us (anybody remember the predictions of Ross Perot, all have come true).
Example: Teachers and the NEA who are always bitching about their paychecks and benefits are way at the top of the middle class, and have stunning benefits, like all government workers.
I remember a story that the guy who opens the state house meetings each day with his wooden pole and a "hear ye, hear ye", earns over $90,000. per year, and that is all he does.
State and federal fat is out of control. Those people need to be fired and go out and earn a real living, with real work, with real world benefits (little to none), and start generating some GNP instead of spending it. I think sometimes that over half of this country is sucking on the government teats.
In the US we cannot even change the citizenship rule regarding birth. To be a citizen of the US you must be born FROM a citizen of the US. That alone would take care of part of the border jumping here. But congress will not even change that simple rule.
In the US the working man has not had "representative" government for over 30 years.
Gov. Sarah Palin, by John McCain's estimation, "knows more about energy than probably anyone in the United States of America,".....really ? At a townhall event in Wisconsin on Thursday, Palin was asked whether it was true that the United States was shipping 75 percent of its Alaskan oil overseas. She responded by proclaiming it impossible, since Congress had put strict bans on the amount of oil and gas that America could export.... this is false..congress prohibited exports of Alaska oil in 1973 when the Alaska oil pipeline was built. But that ban was lifted in 1996.The ban has never been reinstated. but this is is part of a larger pattern....for a while on the trail, the Alaska Governor was fond of declaring that her job - "as head of state has been to oversee nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas.".....turns out that was wrong too. Alaska accounted for 7.4 percent of total U.S. oil and gas production ... she does shit like this all the time. in all fairness i don't think she is a liar. i think she is misinformed...mccain on the other hand is a liar
Here is my proposal for fixing the US economy: The taxpayer is only on the hook for nationalizing bankrupt businesses.
Why is that true, and does it need to be true. NO
While we are nationalizing the unprofitable entities, we should also nationalize a few profitable entities. They will say its unfair to do that, and what did we do to deserve this, but isn't that what we taxpayers are saying as well.
So lets start with nationalizing the most profitable industries that exploit our national resources: Oil, Gas, timber, and minerals. It all belongs to America, so lets take all of the profits, and use them to recover the losses, and get that debt reduced refund SS, and provide for the welfare of all of the US Citizens.
That will also solve the conflict of interest that we have at the Dept. of Interior where sex is exchanged for national wealth.
Podman, I don't agree the US government should nationalize all industry. That would effectively end capitalism and become communism, such as they enjoy in China. But I also don't see how the US government is obligated, or even constitutionally allowed, to buy up bankrupt businesses. Let them fail, let the depression come. There's no saying the bailout will stave off depression anyway.
As for the war in Iraq, we may win, but its looking more and more like a Pyrrhic victory. I agree with not using US wealth to prop up the world, but unfortunately, this is every bit as much of a weapon for US foreign policy as a tank or a fighter jet.
As soon as you give up in Iraq, because you can't afford it, or stop international aid, because you can't afford it, we cease to be a world superpower. That may happen anyway with this crushing debt. We may have a collapse like the Soviet Union did in 1989 to look forward to.
Chuck is right. Clinton paid down the deficit, but did not pay the national debt. Still, it was a step in the right direction. For that, I give him credit.
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