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-- McCain Campaign Grows Desperate
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| Originally posted by Krypton I don't support Obama just because I believe he'll win. I believe he'll win not because of my personal support for him, but because he has such broad support, and looks more like a leader than McCain could ever hope for. I can't see how Obama won't win, of course, IN A FAIR ELECTION, that is. This is where my politics lie. I am an economic conservative. A believer in free markets. But I also believe that markets should be policed, to avoid systemic market collapsed as a result of a market gone wild. I also believe in social justice. I believe health care is a basic human right. I believe the American leadership should respect the rule of law, and not that of unilateralism. I believe that humans contribute more than any other factor to global climate change and if we are to avert a climate disaster we must change the way we obtain and use energy. The Democrats, much more than the Republicans represent these ideals. They aren't perfect. No political party is perfect. But the Republican Party has fucked things up so bad, I am in open rebellion to it. Yes, I am a registered Republican, but I will be changing that next election cycle. Or I might stay in just to take away my vote from incumbents. I'll decide my party affiliation when the time is right for me. McCain the "maverick" is not maverick in my book. He represents the status quo. I believe this country no longer wants or needs the status quo at this point in time. This country wants reform, change, and different policy. Liberalism is the ideal of change, and liberalism is what this country needs right now. Are there times when this country needs to slow it down, and remain conservative? Most certainly, but today, after 7 years of atrocious conservative rule, liberalism is on the rise. Revolution! Thomas Jefferson once said government should be revolutionized every 10 years. Thank god we only have to wait 8 years! And when i think about the Revolution which started this country, I can't help but think that it was the most liberal movement of all! It was the conservative loyalists who wanted to remain subjects of the crown!  |
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| Originally posted by The17sss Thanks dude. I appreciate the reply to my question and I respect your position. I agree that the country wants reform, but even more spending and government programs and expansion (a la Obama) is not change in the right direction, don't you think? That's what liberalism will bring. I don't see how liberalism is what this country needs. McCain at least wants (or claims to want, who knows) to curtail the earmarking maddness that's going on, and pledges to reform government, which I'm more interested in than reforming the actual country. Liberal policies scare me. I don't know why all the leftists talk about the fear mongering on the right... the left goes bananas with that doom and gloom shit, like we're all going to die tomorrow if we don't do what Al Gore tells us to do. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton What is our alternative? McCain who wants to continue rampant spending on military adventures, or Obama who wants to curtail our militarism (which I think is reaching dangerous levels)? McCain will not be changing our spending patterns. President Clinton did a wonderful job balancing the government budget, and that was after years of Republican rule in which "Deficits don't matter." Taxes are going to increase for those above $250000/yr income. These are levels during the Clinton years, and how well did the economy do then? VERY WELL. This government needs more economic regulation, curtailed militarism, and a balanced budget. I think liberalism is the current ideal most able to fulfill these objectives. |
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| Originally posted by The17sss I know the alternative (McCain) is nothing to be excited about. I don't know if McCain will be changing our spending habits... I don't think they would get any worse. But I do know Obama is proposing to spend $1 trillion over what the current budget is. The tax cuts remaining permanent is good for the economy... I don't see how that can be debated. With more disposable income for individuals, the economy will simply run better. You are buying into the smoke screen of "We're going to only raise taxes on those who make over $250K." This is crucial man, please read on. He wants to double the capital gains tax, when 100 million Americans have stocks and/or 401K's... meaning those very people he claims to be helping will be affected. Just ask the people of Michigan, who are run by democrats, how the "soak-the-rich" policies are working out. They have resulted in high unemployment and low investment. Soaking the rich might have some political resonance, but it�s risky to strip investment incentives from those most likely to create jobs. And despite the rhetoric, even with the Bush tax cuts, the top 1 percent of American earners still carry 40% of the tax burden, compared with 31.6% in 1996 under Clinton, according to the IRS. This is what the Dems don't understand man.... it the great unreported truth of tax revenues under the Bush administration. The rich pay more as a percentage of federal revenues now than they did during the Clinton administration, in part BECAUSE of the Bush tax cuts. The big cut in the capital gains tax rate encouraged more investment and more diversity on the part of major venture capital funds. That allowed more businesses to open, more jobs to be created, and more profit to tax, increasing revenues to the federal government. Instead of following the obvious success of these specific cuts by reducing the corporate tax rates, the highest in the Western world, Obama wants to reverse the very cuts that resulted in the wealth redistribution he seeks. He wants to return the capital-gains tax rates to their pre-Bush levels, which will have two effects. First, venture capitalists will sell off their investments ahead of the rate change to avoid the new rate, and they will find safer investments in the future rather than pay the same level of tax on riskier investments. Both effects will cost jobs in a market that can hardly afford to shed more of them, and in the end it will reduce rather than increase the revenue stream to the federal government. |
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| Restore Fiscal Discipline to Washington * Reinstate PAYGO Rules: Obama believes that a critical step in restoring fiscal discipline is enforcing pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budgeting rules which require new spending commitments or tax changes to be paid for by cuts to other programs or new revenue. * Reverse Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy: Obama will protect tax cuts for poor and middle class families, but he will reverse most of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers. * Cut Pork Barrel Spending: Obama introduced and passed bipartisan legislation that would require more disclosure and transparency for special-interest earmarks. Obama believes that spending that cannot withstand public scrutiny cannot be justified. Obama will slash earmarks to no greater than year 2001 levels and ensure all spending decisions are open to the public. * Make Government Spending More Accountable and Efficient: Obama will ensure that federal contracts over $25,000 are competitively bid. Obama will also increase the efficiency of government programs through better use of technology, stronger management that demands accountability and by leveraging the government's high-volume purchasing power to get lower prices. * End Wasteful Government Spending: Obama will stop funding wasteful, obsolete federal government programs that make no financial sense. Obama has called for an end to subsidies for oil and gas companies that are enjoying record profits, as well as the elimination of subsidies to the private student loan industry which has repeatedly used unethical business practices. Obama will also tackle wasteful spending in the Medicare program. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton Correction, 2004. |
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| "Obama would rather lose a war to win an election" -John McCain If that does not imply Obama as a traitor, let me know..  |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo yeah, i'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that one. you meant 2000 i'm sure but i can't prove it. |
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| what makes McCain's statement factually correct was Obama's position prior to clinching X amount of delegates for the Democrat primary. you don't think the war was just and i don't think youre a traitor, you just hold a position. same with Obama. but if you want to talk about having a posistion, for the longest time Obama touted this war was wrong in every sense of the word. he won the nomination on those core beliefs. his voting record reflected that then. now, i honestly don't know what he believes but whatever it is, it's done so out of political ambition and not what it was that got him there in the first place. i wouldn't call that traitorous though. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton lol, you sure are trying hard to nail me on insignificant mistakes.. |
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| By all accounts, he still advocates a 16 month draw down. |
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| Wolfe In Iraq, it�s not new that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has wanted to take control of his own country. But there�s always been this gap between his assessment of his abilities and American commanders� saying he�s not up to it. As president, faced with that difference between what he says he can do and what the commanders say he can do, how would you choose between them? Obama Iraq is a sovereign country. Not just according to me, but according to George Bush and John McCain. So ultimately our presence there is at their invitation, and their policy decisions have to be taken into account. I also think that Maliki recognizes that they�re going to need our help for some time to come, as our commanders insist, but that the help is of the sort that is consistent with the kind of phased withdrawal that I have promoted. We�re going to have to provide them with logistical support, intelligence support. We�re going to have to have a very capable counterterrorism strike force. We�re going to have to continue to train their Army and police to make them more effective. Wolfe You�ve been talking about those limited missions for a long time. Having gone there and talked to both diplomatic and military folks, do you have a clearer idea of how big a force you�d need to leave behind to fulfill all those functions? Obama I do think that�s entirely conditions-based. It�s hard to anticipate where we may be six months from >LINK< |
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| Originally posted by Krypton Here is Obama's fiscal policy...I'm pretty damn satisfied by it... As for taxes. Warren Buffet, my role model I might add, has said himself that the middle class pays a higher percentage of their income in taxes than do the wealthy. And he put forth his own example. He paid 17% of his payroll/income in taxes. The average for his Berkshire Hathaway office which included secretaries and assistants was over 30%! This most certainly needs to be adjusted. The capital gains tax would rise as you said, but the brunt of the rise would be on the wealthy, who can most certainly afford it! Additionally, the wealthy usually keep their investments for YEARS, even decades. They are not always trading stocks back and forth all the time. Therefore, they rarely pay capital gains taxes. Also, if one is to keep their stock investment for more than 1 year, the capital gains tax is decreased, which provides further incentive to keep gain UNREALIZED. Remember, capital gains are only applied with REALIZED gains. This will be of interest to you... |
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| We're told the rich paid more taxes because they made a greater share of the money. That's true. "The top 1% earned 22% of all reported income, but they also paid a share of taxes not far from double their share of income. In other words, the tax code's already steeply progressive. Yes, even at 35, 36%. And what this proves is the old adage that when you lower taxes, you get increased revenue. Listen to these numbers. "In 1990, the richest 1% were 14% of the nation's income. They paid 25% of all taxes. In 2000, they paid 37%. In 2005, they paid 39%; and 2006, 40%." So since 1990, the rich, top 1%, richest 1% have paid from 25% in 1990 to 40% in 2006 of all income taxes. The richest 5% in 1990 paid 44%. In 2000, they paid 56%; in 2005, paid 60%. The top 10% now pay 71%. But the big number is the top 50% are paying 97.1% of all taxes. "It proves the way to soak the rich is with lower tax rates, and the IRS data from last week provide more powerful validation of that proposition. But, nevertheless, the Democrats and Obama continue to say that these tax cuts have been a giveaway to the rich and it's a figment of their imagination. Taxes paid by millionaire households more than doubled to $274 billion in 2006, from $136 billion in 2003." What happened in 2003? We rolled back the Clinton tax increases! "No president has ever plied more money from the rich than George W. Bush did with his 2003 tax cuts. These tax payments from the rich explain the very rapid reduction in the budget deficit to 1.9% of GDP in 2006 when it was 3.5% in 2003. |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo like everything else this man asserts, it's "entirely conditions based" now. |
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| Obama advisors as saying this could mean leaving as many as 50,000 troops in place. According to a recent essay by Colin Kahl, who runs Obama�s working group on Iraq, in the �near term� they might keep as many as 12 brigades there for �overwatch,� i.e. support, duties. If Obama�s top priority really is withdrawal, his Iraq policy should begin by setting the number of troops he�s comfortable leaving in the field and then asking for recommendations on which missions are feasible given that number. The fact that he�s going about it the other way, starting with the missions and then building any drawdown around them, is a decidedly McCain-esque (i.e. conditions-based, i.e. responsible) approach. He tweaked McCain this morning for having lately come around to so many of his own positions, but in light of this, he and Maverick are almost mirror images on Iraq now: McCain thinks troop levels should depend on conditions but concedes that 16 months is a �pretty good timetable� whereas Obama thinks 16 months is a pretty good timetable but concedes that, er, troop levels should depend on conditions. |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo "still" is debatable, but since when? thats the question. anyway, about "still". this is from yesterday: like everything else this man asserts, it's "entirely conditions based" now. |
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| A Responsible, Phased Withdrawal Barack Obama believes we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 � more than 7 years after the war began. Under the Obama plan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. He will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism. |
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| Originally posted by The17sss Forget what Warren Buffet said. Here are the unadulterated, updated IRS tax FACTS that came out last week, clearly showing the "rich" pay a higher percentage of the taxes (I guess you didn't see my response to the other guy about the same issue) Read on: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121...=googlenews_wsj |
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| Originally posted by The17sss I'd like to add this quote to that statement as backup---> |
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| When the new administration takes office in January 2009, it must follow up on this approach by initiating a down payment on redeployment. Starting from the roughly 15 combat brigades (a total of 130,000-140,000 troops) it is likely to inherit, the new administration should signal its intention to transition to a "support," or "overwatch," role by announcing the near-term reduction of U.S. forces to perhaps 12 brigades. The new administration should also immediately sign a formal pledge with the Iraqi government stating unequivocally that it will not seek, accept, or under any conditions establish permanent or "enduring" military bases in Iraq. Taken together, these actions would signal to the Iraqi government that the U.S. commitment is no longer open-ended while still maintaining enough forces in the near term to prevent a major reversal of progress on security. These steps would also signal to groups inside the Iraqi parliament that strongly oppose the occupation (especially the Sadrists), as well as to the organizations representing the nationalist wing of the Sunni insurgency, that the United States does not intend to stay forever. This might open up additional avenues for bringing those Sunnis into formal and informal negotiations. |
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| Originally posted by The17sss I'd like to add this quote to that statement as backup---> |
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| Originally posted by Krypton That does not negate the fact that the wealthiest still pay a LESSER percentage of their income in taxes than do the middle class. It doesn't matter what percentage of all taxes paid to the government are from the wealthy. They still pay less of their income in taxes than do the middle class. It's probably better to look at the essay itself instead of an aol message board... |
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| Originally posted by Q5echo it's one thing for someone that hates Bush to criticize people for supporting what he does, it's downright scary how those same people follow this guy no matter what he says. |
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| I have never seen a presidential candidate with less to offer this nation, yet with more arrogance and self-delusion than Barack Obama. And you look at the reason and the way that some support Obama, you can understand the roots of tyranny, I think. I'm not saying he's a tyrant, don't misunderstand. What I'm saying is that so many people have to suspend both reason and experience to support a guy like Obama. You have to throw out common sense, you have to throw out experience, you have to throw out everything you know and totally entrust a personality that you don't even know personally. Obama not only thinks that he is the savior, so do his supporters. Obama knows that that's how he is viewed, as a savior, which is why he speaks as he does, which is why he acts as he does. He knows who his audience is; he knows how to connect with it. He's brilliant at that. He knows exactly who he's talking to. |
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| Originally posted by The17sss People still use AOL? Ahhh, Krypton, it's comments such as the line above that make it hard to dislike you As for the tax comment, what do you want man? Why should people who make over $250K to pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes when the richest 10% already pay 70% of them? Where is the reward for your hard work? Imagine yourself in that position. If you were making like, $400K per year, would you be saying to yourself, "You know what? I've busted my ass in school and work for years to get this far... it's only fair to those who can barely make ends meet that I give back a massive chunk because it would be more fair to them." Hell no! You'd be too busy waxing your Bently and thinking of your upcoming trip to San Tropez |
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| Originally posted by Krypton Well, I found what you posted here.. http://messageboards.aol.com/aol/en...rUnhidden=false FAIR TAX 4 da win!! |
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| Originally posted by The17sss HAHA... dude take it easy. You are blinded by your seething hatred. Yes, I do think Kerry and Gore would have been worse. From what I recall, Clinton was President during the 1993 trade center bombing, and look where the democratic strategy of "lets let the court system handle it" got us. |
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| Originally posted by The17sss You're right... most are not happy. So what's the problem with allowing the healthcare industry to operate as any other free market industry operates, where you get affordable prices through competition? Why toss that idea into the garbage and instead just back up the idea of socialized medicine? |
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| Originally posted by Dj Smitty20 who says they will be affordable? Are they affordable now for most Americans? I think not. Your trust in insurance companies is startling, considering the abundance of evidence out there that clearly proves they are more interested in their bottom line than actually providing 100% guaranteed coverage. |
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| Originally posted by The17sss Are you retarded? I'm not even talking about insurance companies. I don't have any trust in them, are you shitting me? I'm talking about allowing healthcare to run in the private sector, like any other industry. The market and it's competition between companies will dictate the pricing and make it affordable. |
Hah! It cost me $150 deductable to have simple little biopsy done on my skin. That mean insurance paid hundreds of dollars more than I did. All they did was numb the spot with a shot, and cut it out, put a couple stitches, done. Health care in this country is not only dominated by insurance companies, but health care itself is way too overpriced.
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| Originally posted by Q5echo using a similar standard to yours, Obama only lived "abroad" as a child. |
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| do you think wisdom is more important or knowledge. and i'd argue that, again, your assuption of Obama's knowledge is a perception and little else. the beauty of the office of the president of the United States is that it's set up for one man, someone who is, yes, advised by council, to lead with his judgement and his alone. it's set up in a way that makes him and him alone responsible for the decision making. what i'm saying is that it does matter what defines the man as a sound judge of character. so far, Obama hasn't proven that to the electorate substantively and the polls reflect that. |
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| Originally posted by The17sss Are you retarded? I'm not even talking about insurance companies. I don't have any trust in them, are you shitting me? I'm talking about allowing healthcare to run in the private sector, like any other industry. The market and it's competition between companies will dictate the pricing and make it affordable. |
It's basically the "old guard" vs. the new. Americans, and frankly, the world is tired of the American old guard elites.
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| Originally posted by Kinezi There are lot of countries where Government and Private hospitals runs side by side.. What happens generally in the long run is private hospitles become a symbol of elite, with top notch facility and expensive treatments.. where as government hospitles becomes poor mans hospitals with very low cost for the same treatment but poor facilities and hygine and stuff.. So why not make all govt hospitals private? Its not possible.. medical healthcare business requires huge investments, maintainance costs and sheer amount of skilled labour you need to run a hospital .. the technology too keeps changing at very fast pace and you need keep updating the equipments and facilities.. costs are very high in running a hospital.. unless govt subsidises it, there is no way to bring costs down.. (like competition and stuff mentioned earlier).. running a hospital is not like running a low cost airlner or something.. |
Wow, with ads like this he just proves the title of this thread. It's hard to even imagine why McCain would approve this incredibly stupid message.
Btw, "where was McCain" when voting on veteran benefits?
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