McCain?

[TomNook]

Sorry that we don't have time to spend money on "social programs" due to an economy that was bound to collapse regardless if we had gone to war, when the previous administration failed to properly take care of the leftovers Bush had to deal with.

So how does this explain the surpluses that Bill Clinton had in his terms in office? Did you know that for the cost of the Iraq war (which, in case you forgot, had and still has no justification whatsoever), we could have had a great national healthcare system, solved the mortgage crisis, vastly improved education, hospitals, and roads, and had some leftover, perhaps to assist these failing banks?

He sat on a growing economy left over from Bush Sr. The only reason national health care is even an issue is because those damn baby boomers have decided that they want us to pay for what they think is entitled to them. Thanks Dr.Spock, thanks a lot.

 

[ellimist337]

Sorry that we don't have time to spend money on "social programs" due to an economy that was bound to collapse regardless if we had gone to war, when the previous administration failed to properly take care of the leftovers Bush had to deal with.

So how does this explain the surpluses that Bill Clinton had in his terms in office? Did you know that for the cost of the Iraq war (which, in case you forgot, had and still has no justification whatsoever), we could have had a great national healthcare system, solved the mortgage crisis, vastly improved education, hospitals, and roads, and had some leftover, perhaps to assist these failing banks?

He sat on a growing economy left over from Bush Sr. The only reason national health care is even an issue is because those damn baby boomers have decided that they want us to pay for what they think is entitled to them. Thanks Dr.Spock, thanks a lot.

So why didn't W sit on a still-growing economy? It doesn't change the fact that McCain's economic policies won't do anything different. I take it you don't believe that national health care is important then? I'll listen to that argument because I do understand that many people don't feel they should pay for others to have health care when they work hard to earn that money for themselves. The only thing I can say to that is that, if the money is going to be spent anyway, I would prefer the money is spent on improving the country as opposed to funding the unnecessary deaths of Americans. We can cut the military spending by half and it will still be by far the area where the most money is spent; security isn't an issue. Plus, it seems to have worked out pretty well for most of Europe... also, health care would probably benefit the working class who are now in danger of losing their social security just as much if not more than the baby boomers.

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

This is one of the most spot-on analyses of the current situation I've seen from any forum.
Now, as for McCain hate, I do not have it. I don't hate Obama either. I just hate many more of Obama's ideas than McCain's ideas, and as such, would rather have McCain in office, though in all honesty, I'd rather bring Reagan back from the dead, as Reagan is one of my favorite political figures in history.

Reagan... sucked, he liked to fuck over minorities and spend ridiculous amounts of money on defense, the only good thing that came from his presidency was the beginning of the end of the cold war. I think it was amusing how he liked to flip flop policies, first he is a war hungry macho, then suddenly anti-nuke. What we need is a new Teddy Roosevelt... Best. President. Ever.

 

[Hunde Des Krieg]

mccain hate?
hes a stuck-in-his-ways old man, seems unadaptable and angry, throws being held as a POW and tortured as a qualification (perhaps for psychiatric examination or a position running veterans affairs, but not president-being tortured does not make you a good leader, trust me on this) at EVERY possible opprotunity and knows absolutely nothing about computers, likely plans to ignore education and our infastructure, both physical and computer. im going to guess he will solve any scientific problems by just throwing money at them (or ignore them). also in the third debate he called me retarded, at this point it becomes personal hate. he wants to stay at war forever, i personally dont think he understands the culture of the people were fighting, and he was cought SINGING about bombing iran. you dont fucking do that if you have the power to make it happen unless your visibly intoxicated, and even then it is not to be looked upon kindly. but thats just him, lets move on to his running mate

sara palin is closed minded. she is clearly an idiot. she is an attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator. shes a *****. shes against abortion even if "a 15 year old is raped by a family member". she incites fanaticism and KILLING the other guy, who seems like he would be a good leader in congress even if he doesnt make president, oh, and the small issue of murdering your political opponets but keeping plausible deniability, no bad guy has ever done that. ever. she had a fucking exorcism. and there is a serious danger that john mccain will die in office, and this psycho might be president. now im not proposing she should be locked up, but i think people like her cant coexist peacefully with the rest of soceity. i think they should be put someplace remote, someplace hard to get to, someplace nobody in their right mind would want to live, and its gotta have a harsh enviroment so that that they cant just walk back, far FAR away from civilization. alaska maybe?

then theres the campaign. run by the same people that did george W bush. nuff said. red lightsabres are cool and all, but i would rather not have anyone in power be pulling the jedi mind trick on me.(im not a star wars geek, the bad guys had that too right?)

the other candidate seems like someone who might actually do some good, sure hes hiding something, but his campaign isnt being run by the kind of lies, and if theres anything legitimately bad about him the republicans would have found it by now. far from perfect but more than good enough and im not holding my breath for nader 08, or even barr 08.

also, i am the fabled liberal elitist, i think the smart people should be doing thinking work and the stupid people should be breaking rocks, lifting things, being paid LOTS of money to clean out sewers, or asking me if i would like fries with my large order of fries. i also think that anyone and/or anything should be able to legally fuck anyone/anything else as long as both parties are sentient and consent to the act(s) in question. maybe getting educated. i dont think stupidity and ignorance are things that you should take pride in, i beleive they are things to be ashamed of, cured, or left alone(i will admit, i do not want to know what my grandparents look like during sex, and if you try to kill me i WILL do my absolute best to hurt you, and i dont see any pressing need to know about the technical specs of the first computer). i dont understand why that makes me a horrible evil person, there are lots of other things i would want to be hated for if you absolutely must hate me.

electoral college... why cant we count vote-by-vote? they arent peices of paper written by illiterate morons placed in a bag tied shut and to a donkey that has to be carried thousands of miles across rickety rope bridges to be counted by someone who may or may not be able to read. we use computers and shit, theyre even networked! lets use that to give everyone a vote, conservative votes dont count in california and liberal votes dont count in arkansas under the current system, that seems kinda wrong.

Wow, that was quite a rant... but I totally agree. the electoral college should go to hell, liberals aren't evil, sarah palin is a nutjob... and all of McCain's adds attack Obama, I haven't seen one that highlights McCain, probably because there is nothing to highlight. also McCain is not a hero for being a POW, he is just a tough guy. Period.

 

[jackknife402]

Hey, all I know is, that there was this little thing against extreme socialism...mainly called...oh, I dunno, The Cold War?

Obama's ideals are right along with all socialist ideals, spread the wealth, share everything with everyone else, no exceeding eachother.

Let's try to remember how well that's done, eh? People are naturally selfish, you'll never please them. I really wish people would have listened to what they did against that plumber, it wasn't about what the plumber said, it was what Obama said. "I want to spread the wealth around."

Let's not forget that the American economy is CAPITALIST! Which means only those who strive for the cash, get it. The market has its ups and downs, yet corrects itself. The new regime is too focused on the short term rather than the long term. If you tax a big company which provides products to citizens underneath it, then naturally it will raise its own prices to offset the taxes.

One of the big concerns in the United States is gas prices, from hearsay from a few different news networks, it seems that if taxes were lowered for the oil companies, the price per barrel will drop so much that there will be a decrase in up to $.80 per gallon of gas, regular.

That is why I'm voting McCain. I don't want to become another Russia under this monkey-headed Buffoon that is Barrack Obama. (If you call me racist for that comment, go screw yourself, his ears stick out like a goddamn monkeys! Not to mention there are monkeys in different parts of the world besides African.)

 

[bl82]

Given the U.S' status as THE global power, foreign nations should take interest in this election, Iranian or not.

 

[Eiseman]

Hey, all I know is, that there was this little thing against extreme socialism...mainly called...oh, I dunno, The Cold War?

Obama's ideals are right along with all socialist ideals, spread the wealth, share everything with everyone else, no exceeding eachother.

Let's try to remember how well that's done, eh? People are naturally selfish, you'll never please them. I really wish people would have listened to what they did against that plumber, it wasn't about what the plumber said, it was what Obama said. "I want to spread the wealth around."

Let's not forget that the American economy is CAPITALIST! Which means only those who strive for the cash, get it. The market has its ups and downs, yet corrects itself. The new regime is too focused on the short term rather than the long term. If you tax a big company which provides products to citizens underneath it, then naturally it will raise its own prices to offset the taxes.

One of the big concerns in the United States is gas prices, from hearsay from a few different news networks, it seems that if taxes were lowered for the oil companies, the price per barrel will drop so much that there will be a decrase in up to $.80 per gallon of gas, regular.

That is why I'm voting McCain. I don't want to become another Russia under this monkey-headed Buffoon that is Barrack Obama. (If you call me racist for that comment, go screw yourself, his ears stick out like a goddamn monkeys! Not to mention there are monkeys in different parts of the world besides African.)

1) The Cold War was a struggle between two first-world superpowers, not "Capitalism vs. Communism: The Final Showdown." The latter is called "propaganda," which, while helpful in rallying countrymen to a singular cause, is no longer viable today. We (the United States) won that war because we had more money to spend on defense, which indeed more than likely came from our capitalistic economy. But that only proves which ideology wins in a fight, not which one works better in everyday life.

2) If you want to see "how well socialism's done," you can look to a number of prosperous European nations.

3) Until it is written in the constitution that "The American economy is CAPITALIST," then our economic practice can be whatever the hell we want it to be. That said, we have never strayed from our capitalist roots, and we're not going to anytime soon, even under Obama's leadership. Right-wingers act like we're sentencing our country to a lifelong Stalin-esque regime, but the fact is we've dabbled in socialist practices before, and it's worked out pretty well so far. I think we've been historically wise in the use of socialist plans, which have specifically been used to fix really serious "short term" problems, and no further.

4) Gas prices are but one of many, many concerns in the United States today. We've got American consumers using borrowed money to live beyond what they earn, middle class workers having to compete with cheaper outsourced workers, the embarrassingly high national debt, a government who owes service to special interest groups before it owes service to the voters, the list goes on. But I'll indulge anyway; how exactly will lower taxes motivate oil companies to lower gas prices, when they've been receiving tax breaks for the past eight years while simultaneously setting record profits? What you're suggesting is the same trickle-down effect that Bush has been trying to utilize since forever, and it has yet to work. The only thing we've seen from cutting oil companies a break is the price of oil set at record highs, but because of how badly we need the fuel in our everyday lives, we've just rolled with it. Neither consumers nor the government have benefited from this, just big business. I don't know about you, but in light of this evidence, I see "PRICE GOUGING" in big neon lettering all over this situation, and beyond that, I see a lack of accountability on Big Oil to be responsible to the consumers in the long term. Instead of using their tax relief to provide their consumers with similar relief so that they'll remain satisfied customers in the long run, they've taken advantage of our immediate demand for oil, turning out record profits and effectively keeping the tax breaks to themselves. That's not helping the economy one bit, and it's going to bite them in the ass later on.

5) Why would I call you a racist, when I could just call you an idiot? You look like you haven't looked any further than Fox News to get any facts, and your last statement only exacerbates that with some terrifyingly right-wing paranoia.

 

[JMeganSnow]

We can cut the military spending by half and it will still be by far the area where the most money is spent; security isn't an issue.

WHAT?! Have you LOOKED at budget numbers at any point in the past 50 years? *By far* the largest expenditure category is middle-class welfare programs including Social Security and Medicare. Here's the Wikipedia page on the 2008 federal budget. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_federal_budget] Defense spending (in which I'm including Global War on Terror, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland security) totals $700 billion--$500 billion LESS than the spending JUST on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan are special appropriations which are supposed to come to something like $10 billion a month, which still leaves defense spending $380 billion shy of JUST the spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

I'm sure the people working in the World Trade Center on 9/11/01 would sure be happy to know that "security isn't an issue".

 

[JMeganSnow]

[
1) The Cold War was a struggle between two first-world superpowers, not "Capitalism vs. Communism: The Final Showdown." The latter is called "propaganda," which, while helpful in rallying countrymen to a singular cause, is no longer viable today. We (the United States) won that war because we had more money to spend on defense, which indeed more than likely came from our capitalistic economy. But that only proves which ideology wins in a fight, not which one works better in everyday life.

It might more properly be called "Communism vs. a Mixed Economy" and a practical demonstration of how productive even a *little* capitalism is. We "won" because the Soviet Bloc eventually collapsed under its own weight, not because of defense spending--even if the U.S. had surrendered the U.S.S.R. would have disintegrated and collapsed. I was 40 km from the East German border when the wall came down. I remember it quite clearly.

I would not consider any country where a single *government engineered* famine killed between 7 and 15+ million people "first world"--and I would not wish to live the "everyday life" of a Soviet peasant. I know people who emigrated to the U.S. with their parents and they have clear memories of waiting in line for 4+ hours every single day just to get bread.

There is no measure by which capitalism does not far exceed communism. The most capitalist era of the world (the 19th century) saw incredible and dramatic improvements in every area of life, from culture to medical care. The population of Europe grew by 300%, following a previous record of something like 3% per century. It was the first time in history when starvation-level subsistence ceased being the norm over the entire globe.

2) If you want to see "how well socialism's done," you can look to a number of prosperous European nations.

You mean, like Ireland, which recently (within the past ten years, I mean) instituted many free-market reforms and suddenly found itself with a booming economy? Or do you mean like France, with the Parisian riots less than three years ago? Europe has been coasting on the energy of a more robust past for decades.

3) Until it is written in the constitution that "The American economy is CAPITALIST," then our economic practice can be whatever the hell we want it to be. That said, we have never strayed from our capitalist roots, and we're not going to anytime soon, even under Obama's leadership. Right-wingers act like we're sentencing our country to a lifelong Stalin-esque regime, but the fact is we've dabbled in socialist practices before, and it's worked out pretty well so far. I think we've been historically wise in the use of socialist plans, which have specifically been used to fix really serious "short term" problems, and no further.

Well, in a sense it is because it's the only system which fully respects individual rights--i.e. the original founding principle of the U.S. as laid out in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution doesn't set forth the founding principles of the country, it only details how the *government* is to be organized.

4) Gas prices are but one of many, many concerns in the United States today. We've got American consumers using borrowed money to live beyond what they earn, middle class workers having to compete with cheaper outsourced workers, the embarrassingly high national debt, a government who owes service to special interest groups before it owes service to the voters, the list goes on. But I'll indulge anyway; how exactly will lower taxes motivate oil companies to lower gas prices, when they've been receiving tax breaks for the past eight years while simultaneously setting record profits? What you're suggesting is the same trickle-down effect that Bush has been trying to utilize since forever, and it has yet to work. The only thing we've seen from cutting oil companies a break is the price of oil set at record highs, but because of how badly we need the fuel in our everyday lives, we've just rolled with it. Neither consumers nor the government have benefited from this, just big business. I don't know about you, but in light of this evidence, I see "PRICE GOUGING" in big neon lettering all over this situation, and beyond that, I see a lack of accountability on Big Oil to be responsible to the consumers in the long term. Instead of using their tax relief to provide their consumers with similar relief so that they'll remain satisfied customers in the long run, they've taken advantage of our immediate demand for oil, turning out record profits and effectively keeping the tax breaks to themselves. That's not helping the economy one bit, and it's going to bite them in the ass later on.

Gas prices are at record highs because the price of crude oil has skyrocketed for a number of reasons, such as increased demand in China and other Far East countries (higher demand means scarcity, therefore higher prices), OPEC reducing output and artificially restricting supply, restricted permits for drilling, etc. It's been estimated that a 1% change in the price of crude generally leads to a corresponding 5% change in gas prices, which is pretty much what has happened if you adjust for the past 10 years worth of high inflation.

In addition, tight environmental restrictions requiring special "blends" in certain parts of the U.S. have increased costs of fuel production and led to, surprise, an increase in prices.

Shortly after Katrina many of these restrictions were temporarily relaxed to mitigate the gas shortage and prices fell accordingly. Record profits can quite easily be an indicator of record high *sales*. They may actually accompany a *decrease* in profit-per-unit. No company can stay in business for long without profit, and the larger the company the more profit they need to be sustainable. We should be glad that oil production is such a profitable enterprise--that means large amounts of capital investments are devoted to making it productive. The productivity of the oil industry is one of the major reasons we enjoy such phenomenal luxuries as electric power.

Price-gouging *cannot* occur for the simple fact that if any company raises its prices above market-sustainable levels their competitor down the street will drop theirs by five cents and make a killing. People hunt far and wide for low gas prices and the competition is FIERCE. (Around here at least one news station posts the 'lowest gas price in the Miami Valley' on their website--the lucky gas station is MOBBED.) It is not uncommon to see intersections with gas stations on all four corners selling gas for precisely the same price--any station which raises their price by so much as a penny will see no business that day.

Anyway, my friend Myrhaf posted a pretty nice article today [http://myrhaf.blogspot.com/2008/10/myrhaf-endorsement-abstain.html] that covers why I, personally, am abstaining.

 

[JMeganSnow]

The house of lords is a heredatort role . . .

. . . that have been heredtory, and the rest are religious and law lords.

It's "hereditary", you bloody ignorant Brits! If you're going to invade this thread full of colonial yahoos at least spell it correctly! You're letting the side down!

 

[BigKingBob]

ok now let me say something very very simply so that everyone understands it:

85% of the house of lords is chosen by the priminister, as a life pier to the house of lords, because they are the best in their field. There is only around...5%? that have been heredtory, and the rest are religious and law lords.

Ok, now let me say this very simply so that you understand:

I already understand that most of the lords are appointed, and if you actually read my last post then you'd see its the very fact that we don't vote them in that annoys me, whether they are a life peer, a hereditary peer or even one of the lords temporal.

 

[Alex_P]

Let's try to remember how well that's done, eh? People are naturally selfish, you'll never please them. I really wish people would have listened to what they did against that plumber, it wasn't about what the plumber said, it was what Obama said. "I want to spread the wealth around."

Oh, jeez, "Joe the Plumber."

"Joe the Plumber" lives in a strange fantasy world. THIS is his argument: "I'm not very successful. In an alternate universe where I was very successful, I would have to pay higher taxes. Why are you trying to tax little unsuccessful ol' me?" It makes absolutely no sense.

The worst part about this is that this is exactly how the Republican base thinks. Someday they will all be successful beyond their wildest dreams, and therefore they fervently support legislation that benefits that class right now.

(The whole point of "spreading the wealth around" answer is that if you think $40k/yr plumbers becoming $250k/yr entrepreneurs is a good thing, you should be trying to help the $40k/yr plumbers build up their resources a little bit.)

-- Alex

 

[TomNook]

Sorry that we don't have time to spend money on "social programs" due to an economy that was bound to collapse regardless if we had gone to war, when the previous administration failed to properly take care of the leftovers Bush had to deal with.

So how does this explain the surpluses that Bill Clinton had in his terms in office? Did you know that for the cost of the Iraq war (which, in case you forgot, had and still has no justification whatsoever), we could have had a great national healthcare system, solved the mortgage crisis, vastly improved education, hospitals, and roads, and had some leftover, perhaps to assist these failing banks?

He sat on a growing economy left over from Bush Sr. The only reason national health care is even an issue is because those damn baby boomers have decided that they want us to pay for what they think is entitled to them. Thanks Dr.Spock, thanks a lot.

So why didn't W sit on a still-growing economy? It doesn't change the fact that McCain's economic policies won't do anything different. I take it you don't believe that national health care is important then? I'll listen to that argument because I do understand that many people don't feel they should pay for others to have health care when they work hard to earn that money for themselves. The only thing I can say to that is that, if the money is going to be spent anyway, I would prefer the money is spent on improving the country as opposed to funding the unnecessary deaths of Americans. We can cut the military spending by half and it will still be by far the area where the most money is spent; security isn't an issue. Plus, it seems to have worked out pretty well for most of Europe... also, health care would probably benefit the working class who are now in danger of losing their social security just as much if not more than the baby boomers.

My self-determination views aside, a national healthcare system would bankrupt the country by the time I'm(18) old enough to take advantage of it. The total cost of the war so far is what a proposed healthcare system will cost in a year. Clinton also rode the .com bubble. It actually popped while he was still in office, the press just doesn't like to talk about it. Bush came in on the projected recession and 9/11, so he got blamed for both.

 

[TomNook]

stuff

-- Alex

If anything, Obama is the one living in the fantasy land. He thinks giving giving people my money for doing absolutely nothing is going to make them want to succeed. Why bother trying when all I need is to get a government check every week. People need to make their own wealth, not take mine because they "deserve" it.

 

[Alex_P]

If anything, Obama is the one living in the fantasy land. He thinks giving giving people my money for doing absolutely nothing is going to make them want to succeed. Why bother trying when all I need is to get a government check every week. People need to make their own wealth, not take mine because they "deserve" it.

Given that they're both just talking about tax cuts (neither of which I particularly want to actually make its way into law), it's ludicrous to accuse one of trying to redistribute wealth like a communist.

-- Alex

 

[Uncompetative]

The Patriot Act is something a Communist would think up if they didn't already live in a snoopy dictatorship.

 

[Alex_P]

The Patriot Act is something a Communist would think up if they didn't already live in a snoopy dictatorship.

Or Joe McCarthy.

-- Alex

 

[jackknife402]

Let's try to remember how well that's done, eh? People are naturally selfish, you'll never please them. I really wish people would have listened to what they did against that plumber, it wasn't about what the plumber said, it was what Obama said. "I want to spread the wealth around."

Oh, jeez, "Joe the Plumber."

"Joe the Plumber" lives in a strange fantasy world. THIS is his argument: "I'm not very successful. In an alternate universe where I was very successful, I would have to pay higher taxes. Why are you trying to tax little unsuccessful ol' me?" It makes absolutely no sense.

The worst part about this is that this is exactly how the Republican base thinks. Someday they will all be successful beyond their wildest dreams, and therefore they fervently support legislation that benefits that class right now.

(The whole point of "spreading the wealth around" answer is that if you think $40k/yr plumbers becoming $250k/yr entrepreneurs is a good thing, you should be trying to help the $40k/yr plumbers build up their resources a little bit.)

-- Alex

the thing is, I take Entrepreneur classes, and it seems that happens quite frequently, compared to what people believe that you're always stuck in the same place, with no way out.