Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
you know, i wouldn't doubt this. but it begs the question: why isn't McCain running on his record?
why is he running on outright, provable lies and know-nothing, facts-be-damned cultural identification platform?
you know, i wouldn't doubt this. but it begs the question: why isn't McCain running on his record?
why is he running on outright, provable lies and know-nothing, facts-be-damned cultural identification platform?
OK, so, yeah, I checked all the bills each of them have introduced as sponsors since 2005. I didn't look at bills where they served as co-sponsors--that would've meant reading over an additional 666 ( ) entries for Obama and an additional 288 for McCain. It's undeniable that McCain has a much higher percentage of bipartisan-sponsored bills (just as it's undeniable that Obama is far more prolific overall as a sponsor and cosponsor); however, it's also easy to cherry-pick a handful of impressively weighty-sounding bills, while simultaneously emphasizing a high bipartisanship rate, in order to exaggerate an image as bridge-builder on Stuff That Really Matters, and I think reviewing just the bills they respectively sponsored illustrates that well enough.
I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.
Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story -- that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.
...
And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.
How white, working-class women view the candidates
By The Associated Press | September 15, 2008
An Associated Press-GfK Poll conducted Sept. 5-10 found John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, taking a slim lead over Democrat Barack Obama. Results showed that blue-collar white women were more likely to see McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as sharing their values and principles. They were 10 percentage points more likely than voters overall to say so about Palin.
How much do you think each candidate shares your own values and principles?
Non-college-educated women who are considered likely voters:
John McCain - 71%
Sarah Palin - 65%
Barack Obama - 52%
Joe Biden - 46%
Likely voters overall:
McCain - 67%
Palin - 55%
Obama - 58%
Biden - 47%
In a session with reporters today, (McCain economic adviser Douglas) Holtz-Eakin was asked:
Q: “What has he (McCain) done on (the) Commerce Committee (which McCain chaired from 2003-2005) that will convince Americans he understands financial markets?
Holtz-Eakin: “He didn’t have jurisdiction over financial markets, but first and foremost he did this (Holtz-Eakin holds up his BlackBerry), telecommunications of the United states, the premier innovation in the past 15 years comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.”
Q: Did he regulate the industry?
“He both regulated and de-regulated the industry as appropriate.”
As part of his proposal to get out of the economic crisis, Obama said he is proposing a $50 billion Emergency Economic Plan to "jump-start job creation." Obama said the plan would save 1 million jobs by rebuilding infrastructure and repairing schools, among other things.
The senator from Illinois said the country also must continue to address the housing crisis and build a "21st-century regulatory framework." Obama vowed to "get serious" about regulatory oversight.
"If you're a financial institution that can borrow from the government, you should be subject to government oversight and supervision," he said.
Obama said the United States needs leadership to get the country out of its financial problems.
"I'll provide it, John McCain won't, and that's the choice for the American people in this election," he said.
But Jeffrey Sachs, a renowned economist and special adviser to the U.N. secretary-general, said neither candidate will be able to stop continued financial woes in the near future.
"I think right now that this is a recession that's going to happen," he said."I don't see anybody being able to stop that giant wave. The question is how we get out if it."
Sachs said he thinks Obama's plan is "closer" to being on target, with his calls for regulation. McCain also has started talking about increased regulation, but Sachs said McCain has "reinvented himself in the last 24 hours" with such talk.
As I've hinted at before, people criticize Obama for not having a clear economic plan (although McCain doesn't, either), but they miss the crucial foundation of the ideas that Obama presents. His plans are rooted in the very principles that helped steer us out of the Great Depression (aside from WWII, of course)---that is, the notion of government-funded organizations that not only create jobs, but also work toward the betterment of the infrastructure of the nation at the same time....helping the economy of today and nurturing that of tomorrow.
Obama says he's better on economy - CNN.com
I'd love to see Obama and his campaign relay this fact and elucidate the details to the public through commercials, speeches, etc. People criticize him for not having a plan, but the ideas are there. "They're real, and they're spectacular!"
Obama Ridicules McCain's Economic Response
By Anne E. Kornblut
GOLDEN, Colo. -- Ridiculing his rival for sticking with "an economic philosophy that has completely failed," Sen. Barack Obama laid out his approach to managing the current financial crisis -- promising to play a proactive role if he is elected president in order to prevent future meltdowns.
Obama has delivered a series of economic speeches over the last year-and-a-half on the campaign trail, and he recapped some of his top proposals here on Tuesday. But the core of his argument was against Sen. John McCain, who has a long record of promoting deregulation and who has repeatedly said the fundamentals of the economy are strong.
Obama poked fun at McCain for proposing a commission to examine the crisis, calling that "the oldest Washington stunt in the book."
"This isn't 9/11. We know how we got into this mess," Obama said. "What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I'll provide it, John McCain won't, and that's the choice for the American people in this election."
Obama also pointed to a history of Democratic presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, who commanded the country through rough financial waters. And he hammered McCain repeatedly -- for failing, he said, to grasp the root of the problems and for only belatedly deciding that greater regulation is needed.
"John McCain has spent decades in Washington supporting financial institutions instead of their customers," Obama told a crowd of about 2,100 at the Colorado School of Mines.
"In fact, one of the biggest proponents of deregulation in the financial sector is Phil Gramm -- the same man who helped write John McCain's economic plan," Obama continued. He said Gramm is "the same man who said that we're going through a 'mental recession,' and the same man who called the United States of America a 'nation of whiners.'"
"So it's hard to understand how Senator McCain is going to get us out of this crisis by doing the same things with the same old players," Obama said.
Obama, appearing in the same town that Gov. Sarah Palin visited a day earlier, drew an enthusiastic response -- with supporters cheering even some of his more wonkish lines. As he wrapped up his speech, Obama's advisers embraced two apparent gaffes by their rivals -- economic adviser Doug Holt-Eakin's claim that McCain had created the BlackBerry, and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina's admission that neither Palin nor McCain would be qualified to run a major corporation.
Still, Obama took a subdued approach, far from the fiery manner that McCain displayed on the campaign trail when discussing the same topic. And he placed renewed emphasis on his history of reform, citing his efforts to ban lobbyists' gifts to legislators in Springfield, Ill., as a state senator and his subsequent work in the U.S. Senate -- a seeming counterpunch to Palin's frequent references in her stump speech to her work shaking up the Alaska establishment.
The McCain-Palin campaign responded that Obama had both "inflated his own resume" and disparaged American workers with his attacks on McCain, who had revised his earlier claim that the fundamental of the economy are strong to state that, in fact, it is American workers who are strong. "Barack Obama offered nothing new except for sharp criticisms of the most fundamental elements of the American economy and pessimism about genuine efforts to restore our country's prosperity," McCain-Palin spokesman Tucker Bounds said.
Heckuva job, Republicans.
:waitsforpostblamingthosenumbersonthecurrentCongress:
Heckuva job, Republicans.
Actually, Bush did not "have" to deal with all of that. He fought two wars and had high gas prices when only one was necessary (the less expensive one) and did nothing to combat the gas prices.
Raising taxes on small business owners and big business will not grow jobs.
The number of people who think the world would be safer today and the energy market in better condition with Saddam in power in Iraq gets smaller and smaller.
Yes, the world is safer now that instead of one nutjob trying to get a finger on the button, Iraq is now filled with thousands hoping to get their fingers on one. And the energy market was going to hit bottom anyway. Oil is antiquated. Face it--the world needed to move on, and this was the impetus. (Actually, it's America that needs to move on--several places in the EU are already doing great with alternative energy, mostly government-sponsored like Obama proposes.)
Saying "Drill, drill, drill!" in 2008 is like saying "Typewriter, typewriter, typewriter!" in 1992. Just plain dumb.
STING, I enjoy it when you say things like "the number of people is growing smaller" when you base the thought entirely on your own opinion. I then enjoy it even more when you follow up by quoting one or two op-ed pieces as proof of a massive movement.
The threat that Saddam posed to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the worlds key source of energy, no longer exist in the Iraq of 2008. Not only does Iraq currently not possess the military capabilities of Saddam's Iraq, but more importantly it does not have a government with the history of behavior like that of Saddam's regime, or that has intentions for the future similar to what Saddam's regime had.