McCain's next step?
It's been a bad couple of weeks for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. The financial meltdown seemed to send more people toward Obama. Pretty much all the polls, both national and in key states, are trending in Obama's direction. Some of McCain's supporters are going way off the reservation with their crazy, hateful behavior at rallies. And he has a running mate who, after providing an initial boost, has become, in some ways, more of a liability than a benefit. Tonight's final face-to-face meeting with Obama may be McCain's last, best chance to turn his fortunes around. It seems fairly likely that he'll stray from the core issues of the economy and national security to trot down the Ayers-Rezko path. But thus far, that approach hasn't provided much traction. Maybe McCain just has to pick the "nuclear option" and put all his advertising dollars into a single message featuring Obama's crazy, racist ex-preacher shouting "God Damn America!" In other words, it's Willie Horton time.
Labels: Politics
posted by Brant at
10:26 AM
27 Comments:
Or he could just keep on letting Obama talk like he did to the plumber in Ohio earlier this week about redistribution of wealth.
Anybody who workds hard and thinks their taxes are going down with Obama has been smoking some good stuff. We're going to penalize success.
They should start calling him Robama Hood. This guy is a Marxist all the way and he's going to have Pelosi and the crew rubber stamping everything he wants to do.
We're going to change all right. Change into socialist state.
If you think that's a good thing, vote Obama.
Dale, brilliant commentary. America is about to be changed forever from a growth orientated managed capitalist state to a socialist-marxist state. People will regret where they have been lead by the media and a short term economic crisis, but it be too late. Let alone we talk of foreign policy and future military strength. Bush has already damaged the national strength in this regard and Obama will make the mistake of Carter and weaken the military further in the wake of the Bush mistakes. These are sad sad days coming, all under the false promise of "Hope".
Dale, I could not agree more. Great comment.
"America is about to be changed forever from a growth orientated managed capitalist state to a socialist-marxist state."
This is kinda the same argument that was levied against the (then) proposed European Union... And they have managed steady and predictable growth year over year...
I love capitalism, don't get me wrong... but I recognize its faults... and I am not so quick to assume that "socialist" means "bad"
-ellipses
Do we mean the government-taking-over-the-banks socialism? Just wondering. Our economy is an absolute disaster. A growth-oriented capitalist state is great ... if there is growth. I don't think the third-quarter GDP rate is going to be very encouraging, and the latest retail figures are downright depressing.
But that's all part of the system Brant. Businesses fail. But others prosper. People lose money, people make money.
I don't want any part of a system where money is taken from those who work hard to achieve and it is given to those who don't do the same.
We've had aggressive welfare reform in the past 15 to 20 years and most people agreed that was a good thing. Now, we're going to take a big step backward to a nanny state.
As for your comments about McCain using Wright, why shouldn't that be part of the discussion? The man sat in this hate mongerer's church for 20 years and says he never heard any of this stuff. Yet it's all over the internet. I guess Obama wasn't there on those days. Yeah, that's pretty realistic. And not only did he not have a problem with it, he had the man as part of his inner circle of advisors until he became a political liability. Remember, for the longest time, Wright was just Obama's crazy uncle who he couldn't disown - until he did.
I think I would prefer Robama Hood, socialist-marxist over two inarticulate, out of touch morons. I would also like to point out that no matter who wins, no one is going to be able to fix the atomic bomb we call the economy in four years time. Neither candidate is probably going to be able to pull off what they are hoping as far as the economy goes, health care or any other issue that matters to the voting public. You can count on one thing though the wars will continue.
Dear God, Socialism? Are we going to start seeing Commies under our beds again? Why not roll out the Domino Theory and Better Red Than Dead again?
It's time Americans stop blaming their troubles on the rest of the world and our government and own up to the fact that we are greedy, pig-headed, egotistical arseholes who think the world should kowtow to us simply because of the accident of birth that made us American.
Our tax system sucks. Penalize success? What about the sucessful families who can't afford anything much more than a small roof over their heads because they can't dodge taxes like the big boys who hide their assets in numerous loopholes or ship their manufacturing operations offshore?
I'm sick to death of hearing how cutting taxes on the rich and deregulation encourages new investment. The only fair tax is a flat tax, but you'll never see that because it actually is fair and too many people have too much invested in the IRS morass.
Over the last 40 years most Americans lived off their credit cards and neatly ignored the fact that some very obese chickens were going to come home to roost someday.
We made our own misfortune, and now we expect the rest of the world to feel sorry for us. There's a show biz addage that we would be wise to apply to our "American way of life": Be careful who you step on on the way up, because you'll meet then on the way down.
Actually Dale, on the day that Rev. Wright was video tapped ranting and raving, Sen. Obama had already left the church and joined another. Maybe you should do more reading and less listening and you would know these things. If we as voters are going to make an intelligent decision on who should run our country then maybe we should put party affiliation on hold for a short period of time and research both candidates instead of voting for the party we have been registered as for as long as we have been able to vote. I crossed party lines when I voted for D.A. Toprani and it was because I was tired of the lies and bull from our previous D.A. Why can't we all do the same. Research before we decide. Go to both candidates websites and read what each plans to do. Stop listening to news reports, talk radio and magazines. Make an informed decision on your own without outside influence.
How many Rev. Wright clips are on youtube? I've never looked. Where are all the positive messages he delivered? Why aren't they on there? I would guess that the majority of his sermons were pretty run of the mill. Is it OK to judge a man's career when you only see a small portion of it? That's like watching 2 Jim Brown clips on the internet where Brown lost yardage and saying that he was a terrible running back.
Anonymous who posted at 2:09 p.m. you are exactly right. Maybe you should run for office.
Greg, that's like saying Louis Farakhan is OK because he's only said a handful of hateful things.
And I'm sure that Wright just suddenly started spouting sermons about the U.S. KKofK and that the government invented the AIDS virus to kill the black man after Obama left the church.
That's why Obama was OK with having him as part of his campaign - again - until it became a political liability.
As for corporate taxes, accorinding to CNN, Exxon paid more than $1,000 per second in the first quarter of this year - per second. Its tax rate is more than 40 percent.
And that's just what they're paying. That doesn't even take into account what the government syphons off at the pump from the gas stations.
Unfortunately Greg that is the type of society we live in. We are very judgmental people and most of us don't take the time to get to know an individual ourselves we make assumptions off of what we have read, watched or have been told. This is why there is still racism, sexism, discrimination against religion and sexual orientation and a tirade of many others. You blog about them all on a regular basis.
Dale we all know Louis Farrakahan is a deranged racist but that is only because the man has been spouting off this poison for over 30 years. His comments and actions have been televised for about just as long. Rev. Wright has only been shown a few times on television and most of the time it was the same clip over and over again. I am not sure how many times he may show up on You Tube because I don't waste my time looking up videos on there but do you honestly know if he is a horrible hatemonger? No, you don't. Do you honestly know if he really feels this way or was he just trying to get a reaction out of his congregation? No, you don't. We should not pass judgment on an individual based on a few video snip its we have seen on the internet or on television.
So we're not supposed to judge someone on what they've said? And it's far more than just one.
Brant just happened to mention only one of the incidents. There are others. But you guys keep drinking the Obama kool-aide.
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
If we judged people on what they said then there would be no one in office, there would be no police officers, judges, doctors etc. etc. The list goes on and on. There are no decent politicians. They all lie, they all hide things, they all have hidden agendas for everything. And Anonymous if that is the case that we should judge by what people say then we must judge by what they do and Sarah Palin using her position to bully people in firing her ex brother-in-law because he treated her sister like shit is bull. So she shouldn't be our VP because as soon as she has a personal vendetta against someone she will use her political status to get her way like a school girl trying to get back at the school tramp for stealing her boyfriend.
If you actually LISTEN to Wright's sermon and not just the sound bytes, you might see that what he says is true in many cases. Maybe we didn't try to kill blacks with AIDs, but there can be no argument against the fact that white Americans and most of the white world overtly committed, and continue to commit, sins against people of color.
Americans DID walk all over Indians and blacks to build this country. We and our European pals stuck, and continue to stick, our noses into the Middle East under the pretense of installing Democracy without the slightest thought of whether the people in those countries wanted or want Democracy. We howled long and hard when we thought that Russia wanted to foist its way of life on the US and the rest of the world, but we have no qualms about doing the reverse. One thing about building "a shining city on a hill": It makes it very easy to see that city's faults.
We arrogantly discount centuries of history that featured Europeans and Americans stomping all over the Middle East, arbitraily redrawing its borders and trying to take on "the White Man's Burden" of educating those poor, ignorant fools about the "indisputable" fact that our way of life and our religion were better than anything they could think up.
You're mad because, seven years ago, 20 Arabs flew a few planes into three of our buildings? Or because they blew up some of our military bases? Well, think back on how many thousands -- even millions -- of residents of the Middle East and elsewhere have been slaughtered over the centuries to spread capitalism and Christianity and secure oil. Then maybe you'll understand why so many in "that part of the world" hate the US.
As for corporations overpaying taxes, you see what a hands-off attitude toward business has done in eight short years. If you think that once we lower the tax "burden" of Exxon and other such megacompanies, those companies will start giving us 30-cent-a-gallon gasoline again, then you would have had no problem paying no attention to the man behind the curtain in "The Wizard of Oz."
Dale, when you say, "I don't want any part of a system where money is taken from those who work hard to achieve and it is given to those who don't do the same," you are talking about the CURRENT system in which Wall Street tycoons run their businesses into the ground and then expect you and I, who have worked hard and tried to live within our means, to bail them out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, all the while waltzing out the doors of their ruined companies with multi-million-dollar golden parachutes. Nice system we have now, isn't it?
Brant, Dale never seemed to defend the moronic action that both Democrats and Republicans passed together (and some D's and R's opposed also). The bailout does not make our current system that has made us the most powerful nation in the world wrong. We have had past failures and we survived and eventually prospered. Those that failed should fail. Those that used their money wisely should prosper. Otherwise we encourage irresponsible behavior at all times. Why save? The government will take care of you. Why not run up credit card debt? The government will bail you out.
My ancestors were Irish and German Catholics who were pretty much treated like the scum of the earth when they migrated to this country long after the "whites" you're talking about blew through the Indians. We also settled here in Pennsylvania, which means we didn't own any slaves.
Sorry, I don't feel any shame for what went down with slavery here. I've never owned one and wouldn't want to. Anybody who knows me knows that I treat all people the same regardless of color. So when the good Rev. Wright goes off on a rant on the evils of Whitey, I'm not buying it.
If you choose to feel shame for the sins - real or imagined - of your ancestors, that's your business.
Me, I'm fine with it all.
And no, Brant, I'm not a fan of corporate bailouts. As I said, companies fail all the time. And if these guys try to walk away with a big buyout while Rome is burning, investigate. There's a good chance there's some dirt there.
Businesses fail. Heck, our business is undergoing a major upheaval. Some papers are going to fail. But sometimes they deserve to fail. They didn't adapt to the times well enough.
Dale, if a small town newspaper fails, it sucks, but it doesn't really affect a bakery in Seattle... If the entire financial sector fails, it's more than simply survival of the fittest... the lending industry is arguably the foundation of an economy... if it crumbles, you can't very well just say "tough luck" because it could take decades to rebuild that capital...
Bailouts suck... but the alternative is worse
-ellipses
Would they have failed if the government hadn't stepped in and forced them to take on risky borrowers under the guise of fairness?
Just asking.
I would say probably... just not yet. That hastened the collapse, but the discovery of bundled debt as a leveraging tool would have occurred at some point regardless of whether they were making bad loans... also, the risky, "forced" loans, I believe, account for something like 4% of debt assets... What weakened the mortar in this collapse was the evaporation of home values... the failure of repayment on bad loans was like removing bricks here and there.
-ellipses
Dale, I see your point about not getting hung up on the past, and that many more people than blacks and Indians got a raw deal. And I thoroughly agree that in order to live a fruitful life, it's better to move on and worry about the present, which is where we all live. However, I don't think that many whites can appreciate the culture and environment that many blacks were raised in. Righteous anger has a place not only in religion but in everyday life.
One of my friends subscribes to the belief that those alive today can somehow change the eternal fate of their long-dead relatives by living correctly -- as the departed are in some purgatorial holding tank waiting for the keymaster to let them out a because great-great-great-great grandnephew said and did the right thing in this timeframe. I can't buy into that, so I'm not going to stop the next black guy I see and say, "Sorry 'bout the slavery thing, bro!" But I don't think it's as simple as saying, "Stuff happens." The powerful abuse the less powerful and thus will it ever be. But it doesn't excuse what whites did to people of color, or what powerful nations did and continue to do to less powerful ones in the name of religion and politics. I try to understand the indignation that non-caucasians express.
Dale,
I appreciate everything you wrote in your posts. I have wanted to say so many things that you stated for so long but I just don't know where to begin or even the proper way to write it.
Thank you!
Dale you are the only sensible, thinking person there at the OR. There are a lot of us out there who believe as you do. Thanks for stating it so well.
Just because you agree with Dale doesn't make him the only sensible, thinking person at the O-R. I don't always agree with Dale, but I'm glad he contributes here, because it provides a good counterpoint to some of the other opinions. And Dale is, undoubtedly, a smart guy. That said, there are a couple hundred people who work at the O-R. Dale has some company in the sensible, thinking sector. Cheers.
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