Political Commentary, Columns & Discussion

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This is a place to share articles and columns you've read, to discuss with others. I've posted an article below written by Neal Boortz, a Libertarian Talk Show Host, to the Undecided Voter. I urge you to read this article, share your thoughts, but keep it clean. This Thread doesn't have to be about a single topic, but an open discussion about the articles you've posted.

You can post right leaning columns, or left leaning columns, but I don't want News Articles. This is a place for discussion about Commentary, not news.

To The Undecided Voter
by Neal Boortz

This is long; very long. Hey, I’m a pretty entertaining writer … so give it a go. If you’re an undecided voter in this presidential election the least you owe your country is to try to base your final choice on some substantive facts. No, I don’t have all the facts here … but I have enough of them to perhaps convince you that voting one particular way on November 4th might not be the most brilliant move you’ve ever made.

This election is my 10th. My 10th presidential election since I became a radio talk show host. My 10th election since I began spending more time than the average American thinking about, researching, reading about and talking about the choices voters faces. Look; I mean no arrogance here. It’s just that the average American doesn’t spend from 15 (then) to 22.5 (now) hours a week over the period of a presidential race talking about the candidates, the issues, the non-issues and the consequences of voter choice.
Never in those ten elections can I remember choices so stark and possible outcomes so perilous. For the record, over those 10 elections I voted for the Republican candidate six times and the Libertarian four. Never have I voted for a Democrat for president. I see no need to vote for a Democrat since I have no plans or desires to become a ward of the government. Somehow I don’t think 2008 is going to be the first time.

I’ve noted that some other “pundits” out there are starting to post, in columns and in their blogs, the reasons they are going to vote the way they are going to vote. I’ll make no attempt here to refute their (oh-so refutable) arguments here. Instead, I’m just going to put my thoughts and reasoning in writing just to cleanse my mind. If you can make some use of them; whether it is for laughter, talking points or intellectual consideration, have at it. Me? I’m just pulling the handle.

The Race Factor

Are many black voters going to vote for Barack Obama primarily because of race? Of course, many will. Surveys and polling have shown that the figure may reach 20%. I think it’s well more than that. Is race a sound reason to cast a vote? Probably not. Is it understandable? Absolutely. I cannot fault a black American for voting for Obama. It may turn out to be a negative vote insofar as their dreams and goals are concerned. It may not work out all that well for their children, especially if they’re ambitions and talented. But I don’t think many of us can absolutely say that we wouldn’t be casting the same vote were we in their shoes.

If you are a white American there is no way in the world you can look at this election through the same eyes as a third or fourth generation black American citizen. Several months ago a caller to my show suggested that Barack Obama’s ascendency in the presidential sweepstakes was Black America’s biggest accomplishment. I disagreed. Though I can’t remember the exact words, I said that, in a general sense, the shining moment for Black America may have been the show of patience and restraint shown by black men when they returned from putting their lives on the line in World War II and in Korea to a country with segregated schools, colored waiting rooms, whites only water fountains, beatings, lynchings, water hoses, police dogs and systematic discrimination pretty much every where they looked. The restraint showed by black Americans during the civil rights struggles of the 50’s and 60’s, though not universal, was something to behold.

Now .. try, though you won’t succeed, to put yourself into the mind of a black American. How can you experience or understand the legacy of segregation, violence and second-class citizenry your ancestors went through and not take pride in a black American on the verge of winning the presidency? How many black American voters do you think are uttering to themselves: “If my grandfather had only lived to see this.” It takes a great deal of maturity and a clear understanding of the possible future consequences for someone to put their racial pride aside and swim against the tide on this one. So, there will be no name-calling, at least not here, for people who cast their vote on the basis of race in this election. As I said, It’s understandable.

And Then There’s the Race Card

This really isn’t really a reason to vote for or against Barack Obama, but you do need to know what the next four years are going to be like with an Obama presidency.
During the campaign there have been some rather amazing charges of racism. Let’s see if we can remember a few:

• Using the word “skinny” to refer to Obama is racist.
• “Community organizer” is a racist term.
• Any reference to a connection between Obama and Franklin Raines, the former head of Fannie Mae is racist … that would be because Raines is black.
• All references to Jeremiah Wright are racist; that being due to Wright being black.
• Referring to Obama as “eloquent” is racist because it infers that other blacks are not eloquent.
• For goodness’ sake, don’t say that Obama is “clean.”
• This just in from The Kansas City Star: Calling Obama a “socialist” is also racist because “socialist” is just another code word for black.

And so it goes. We’ve also had several pundits, columnists and opinion-makers flat-out state that if you are white and you don’t vote for Barack Obama it can only be because he’s black. There is simply no other legitimate reason to deny this wonderful man your vote. Vote for McCain, you’re a racist. Simple as that.

Now let’s consider the next four years under President Obama. He is certainly going to introduce ideas and pursue policies that are pure poison to many Americans; especially achievement-oriented self-sufficient citizens. Whenever anyone dares to utter a word in opposition to any Obama position or initiative you can be sure that there is going to be someone waiting close by to start screaming “racist!” By the end of Obama’s first year in the White House virtually every white American will have been called a racist for one reason or another. So, what else is new?

The Republicans

One thing for sure … the Republicans deserve exactly what is happening to them in this election. It’s just too bad the rest of the country has to suffer the lion’s share of the punishment the Republicans so richly deserve. In 1994 the voters were fed up with Clinton and the Republicans swept to control of both houses of congress, largely on the strength of Newt’s Contract with America. Do you remember some of the promises? One that sticks in my mind is their promise to dismantle the Department of Education. Republicans – in 1994 – recognized that the quality of American education had been going steadily downhill since this government behemoth was formed. Well, that was then … this is now. The size of the Education Department, as well as the cost, has doubled. Republicans did this, not Democrats.

As a matter of fact, it’s not just the Department of Education; it’s our entire federal government. Spending has doubled. Size has doubled. All under the Republican watch inside the beltway. Pork barrel spending is completely out of control, and Republicans are behind the wheel. Education and pork spending aside, we have the Medicare prescription benefit, McCain-Feingold, Sarbanes-Oxley, a tepid response to Kelo vs. New London … all elements of a well-deserved Republican drubbing. The problem here is that the cure, that being Barack Obama, might well be much worse of than the disease.
The Republicans don’t deserve power in Washington just as you don’t deserve a boil in the center of your forehead. There are worse things, however. Complete Democrat control or, in the case of your forehead, a nice big melanoma. Pretty much the same things, actually.

It’s not that the Republicans did everything wrong. They got the tax cut thing right, and they responded correctly, for the most part, to the radical Islamic attack on our country. They just did so much wrong at the same time. They got drunk with power, and the hangover affects all of us.

Obama’s Friends

By “Obama’s Friends” we mean the likes of Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko and other assorted miscreants. I could spend a lot of time here detailing the crimes of Obama’s friends --- and make no mistake, they were his friends. At this point I don’t think that any votes are going to be changed one way or another by detailing the corruption of Rezko, the America-hating of Wright or the unrepentant terrorism of Ayers. Suffice it to say that Obama was close to all of these people … and these were associations born of mutual interests and philosophies. If you think that it is fair to judge the character of a person by observing the people they surround themselves with, then the judgment of Barack Obama would be a harsh one.

Obama’s varied storylines regarding his relationship with Ayers have, to say the least, been interesting. The list is incomplete, but thus far we have:

• He was just a guy who lived in my neighborhood.
• I was only eight years old when he was throwing bombs.
• I didn’t know about his history when we started working together
• I thought he had been rehabilitated.

Yeah … I guess it’s OK if you form a close relationship with a bomb-throwing terrorist, as long as he threw the bombs when you were a kid. Works for me. Work for you? In a similar vein, It must be your pastor rails against America, as long as you aren’t in church on those particular days. Or maybe we should say as long as nobody remembers actually seeing you in church on those days.

One interesting point: If Barack Obama was applying for a security clearance as a government employee, these associations would disqualify him. We are, my friends, about to have a president who doesn’t qualify for a security clearance. Pretty pathetic. If Barack Obama becomes president, he would not even qualify to be his own bodyguard.

Continued Below.

 

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Obama’s Tax Policies

You may consider this to be horribly old fashioned, but I operate on the principle that governments have the power to tax so that governments can collect the money needed to pursue and pay for the legitimate functions of that government. By “legitimate functions” I’m referring to law enforcement, national defense, a system of courts to adjudicate interstate disputes, national infrastructure and the costs associated with running the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government, for instance.
Now we can get into quite an argument over what constitutes a “legitimate” function of government, but let’s save it for later. Suffice it to say that Barack Obama has a much different picture of our government’s taxing authority than many of us do.

Before we go on, let me remind you of a point that I first heard made by former Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne. Government has one unique power that you don’t have, and neither do I. This is a power that is denied all private businesses and individuals in this country. That power .. the power unique to government .. is the power to use deadly force to accomplish its goals. If you have a business; a restaurant, for instance; you have to convince people to come to your establishment for a meal. You can advertise for customers, but they make the decision whether or not to give your restaurant a try. When the customers do come in it is up to you to deliver to them a superior product with exemplary service. This is how you get them to come back. Not through force, but through value and service.

Not so the government. You have no choice as to whether you are going to be a customer of government or not. Your patronage is compelled and your payments are extracted at the point of a gun. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall said that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” The power to tax in the wrong hands can certainly bring destruction to our economy an even to our country. I submit to you that the power to tax in the hands of Barack Obama is dangerous: Dangerous to you personally, and dangerous to the very fabric of our Republic.

Just take a look at some of the rhetoric Barack Obama uses when he talks of his plans to increase taxes on the evil, hated rich. In a television interview with (I think) Charles Gibson, Obama was asked if he understood that tax increases have often resulted in decreases in government revenue. Obama responded that he was aware of this fact. He was then asked why, then, would he be so eager to raise taxes? Obama responded that, to him, tax increases were simply a matter of “fairness.” In other words, Obama didn’t wish to use the police power of the state to collect taxes necessary for the legitimate functions of government; he wanted to use his taxing power to promote some vaporous “fairness” in our economy. After all, as Obama put it, the people he wants to tax have more money than they actually need and he wants to give that money to people who actually need it.

Now I ask you, does any of that sound vaguely familiar? Hmmmmm, let’s see. I know I’ve heard something like that somewhere before. Wait! I think I have it. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Some character named Marx made slogan quite popular around 1875 in a writing called “Critique of the Gotha Program.” This phrase is one of the most well-known principals of communism. You can yell, scream, spin around on your eyebrows and spit wooden nickels all you want, but what Barack Obama is pushing here, at least insofar as his tax policies are concerned, is communism. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering Obama’s self-professed affinity for communist student groups and communist professors during his undergraduate years. Oh, you didn’t read that? Maybe that’s because you read his second book, not the first one. But what the heck. He’s eloquent, isn’t he? And he has a good narrative.

As I’ve indicated, I’ve been doing talk radio for 39 years now. I was on the air when we were fighting communism in Southeast Asia. I was flapping my jaws when Soviet leaders seriously entertained dreams of world communism. Throughout all of those years I was never one to scream “communism” every time someone came up with an oddball idea on governance, and I never once found a communist under my bed. But now, at least when you consider tax policy, we have a candidate for president who seems very comfortable with some basic communist principals. Too comfortable. But none of this should really bother you … right? A little communism or socialism never really hurt anyone that you can remember. Besides, Europe is telling us that they’ll like us again if we vote for Obama. That pretty much overrules everything, doesn’t it?

Does this reflect your philosophy?

Come on! Put the celebrity worship aside for a moment. Put skin color aside. Just think about Obama and his “spread the wealth around” tax policy.
Let’s talk heartbeats. Sounds weird, but I’m going somewhere here. A bit of Internet research led me to the fact that the average number of heartbeats in a life time for a human being is about one billion. To make this more understandable, the average human heart beats around 70 times a minute. In one eight-hour work day your heart beats around 33,600 times. This is your heart beating .. every beat subtracted from the one billion .. every beat a part of your life gone, never to be recovered. If you are a moderately successful human being Barack Obama is going to take about 13,000 (39%) of those heartbeats away from you every working day. Put your finger on your wrist and feel your pulse. Feel every heartbeat. Just count up to 100. How much of your life went by as you counted? You can’t get those beats back. They’re gone, for good. Remember, you only have a finite number of those beats of your heart left … and Obama wants 13,000 of them every working day of your life. Those heartbeats – your life – being expended creating wealth. Your heartbeats, your wealth. Obama wants them. You don’t need them. Someone else does. The police power of the state.

Taxes are a nasty little reality of life. Nobody wants anarchy. Government is a necessity. Government, though, is not supposed to create winners and losers. Government is not, as Obama intends, to be used as an instrument of plunder. Almost all Americans are perfectly willing to surrender an appropriate percentage of their earned wealth to fund the legitimate functions of government. I, for one, don’t want to see my wealth confiscated because some bureaucrat has determined I don’t “need” it, and then have to watch as that wealth is used to buy votes from someone who is simply too lazy to generate the wealth they need by themselves … or, as Obama puts it, “spread around.”
What is Obama going to do? How does he determine “need?” What data does he use to determine “fairness?” Maybe he’ll set up some bureaucracy staffed with like-minded leftists who will use data collected in the last census and from those pesky American Community Surveys to establish a basic “need” level for people living in different areas. Once it is determined how much of a person’s wealth they really don’t “need,” it will be a simple matter of confiscation and redistribution to those who do need it. After all, that would be “fair,” wouldn’t it? Come on, it’s not exactly like you worked for that money.
Listen to the rhetoric of the left. Those who are in need are called “the less fortunate.” This means that their status as needy was due to nothing but bad luck. It stands to reason, then, that those with more than they need were just lucky. The fortunate and the less fortunate. The lucky and the not so lucky. And here comes Barack Obama riding over the rainbow on his Unicorn to set everything right and make it all fair. Isn’t that the world you want to live in?


There’s a quote that’s been floating around since I began my talk radio career. This quote is most often attributed to someone named Alexander Tyler writing in 1787 about the fall of the Athenian Republic. Others have said the guy’s name was Tytler. Let’s not argue spelling right now … let’s just get to the quote, because the quote goes to the heart of this presidential election:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
​

Think about this, my friends. Isn’t this exactly what we’re seeing right now? In fact, hasn’t this pretty much been the theme of Democrat Party election politics for nearly as long as you can remember? Here we have Barack Obama promising that he’s only going to raise taxes on the evil rich who make over $250,000 a year while 95% of Americans will get tax cuts. Think of this in terms of votes; higher taxes for 5% of the voters, lower taxes for the other 95%. It really doesn’t take all that much brainpower to figure out how this is going to work at in an election does it? You take money away from the people whose votes you don’t need, and give it to the people whose votes you do need. So very simple. The result is that people have, in fact, discovered that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. Who is promising those wonderful goodies? That would be Barack Obama. Just what percentage of voters out there do you think are going to vote for Obama simply because he is promising them someone else’s money? My guess is that the number would be high enough to constitute the margin of victory for The Great Redistributionist.

Somehow I had this idea when I was growing up that if you wanted something bad enough, you would work hard until you got it. That was then. This is now. Now you vote for it. That’s change you can believe in.

Those Amazing Vanishing Jobs

Barack Obama repeatedly tells the American people that he is going to cut taxes for 95% of them. Now that’s a pretty nifty trick when more than 40% of Americans don’t pay income taxes in the first place. Tell me please … just how do you cut taxes for someone who doesn’t pay taxes?

Here’s the fancy narrative (Obama supporters just love that word) that the Obama campaign has come up with. Even if you don’t pay income taxes, you still pay payroll taxes. So Obama is going to give these people who only pay Social Security and Medicare taxes an offsetting tax credit. At this point Obama’s plan becomes almost impossible to explain. It’s convoluted, to say the least, but that’s out of necessity. When people started reminding him that about one-half of the people he’s going to cut taxes for don’t pay taxes he had to come up with something. The bottom line is this. Obama says that he is not going to take the cost of his tax credits from the Social Security Trust Fund. That’s nice, considering the fact that this so-called Trust Fund exists only on paper anyway. But if that money isn’t subtracted from the Trust Fund … where does it come from? Obama’s people explain that at first the deficit will just have to increase while these checks are written. Later they’ll just go out there and get the money from those “rich people.”

OK … so there we are. It’s tax the rancid rich time so that money can be transferred to the poor. But just who are these evil rich people destined to be beaten down by Obama’s taxes? At first Barack Obama defined them as “people making over $250,000 a year.” That definition had to change when it became known that the $250,000 a years was only for a married couple filing a joint tax return. In a heartbeat Obama changed his rhetoric to note that the tax increase would nail “families,” not “people” earning over 250 grand. If you’re single, the figure will be somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000, depending on who you’re talking to. We’ll try to let you know when Obama settles on a hard figure.

There’s your first lie.

So, what does all of this have to do with jobs? Well the very people that Barack Obama wants to nail with these tax increases are the people who create most of the jobs in our economy; America’s small business owners.

The Democrats spend no small amount of time excoriating corporations. To listen to a Democrat candidate corporations and lobbyists are the sole sources of evil in our society. Oh … and right wing talk show hosts. Well, you can forget these evil, nasty corporations for now. Fact is 70% of all jobs in our economy come from America’s small business owners. The Small Business Administration recently reported that 80% of all new jobs are being created by these small business owners. These are people who report all of their business income on their personal income tax returns. As such, they are squarely in the crosshairs for The Chosen One’s tax increases.

If you are an American concerned about your job with a small business … and if you vote for Obama … then you very well could be cutting your own economic throat. Think about it. If the small business owner(s) who employs you has his taxes increased by Barack Obama he is going to look for a way to replace that money. So where does he go to replace his income lost to Barack’s tax increases? The best way would be to cut expenses. Well guess what? You’re an expense! Will it be your job that is cut to compensate for the increased taxes? Maybe you’ll be lucky and just have to forego your next raise. Maybe there would just be a cut in your pay or a reduction in benefits. Cast your vote and take your chances!

In recent days the McCain campaign has finally started to warn people about the possible consequences of Obama’s tax increases on America’s small businesses. This has forced the Obama campaign to come up with a response. Initially Barack Obama started saying that he was going to give a break on capital gains taxes to small businesses. This worked for a while until people started figuring out that small businesses don’t pay capital gains taxes. Back to the drawing board, and this time they came up with a beauty. It’s a con, but it works. Barack Obama is now telling the media and anyone else who will listen that 95% of America’s small businesses don’t make $250,000 a year, and thus won’t be affected by Obama’s tax increases.

That’s the second lie. A lie of omission.

Obama’s statistics may be accurate .. or nearly so. But the statement leaves one very important statistic out. Initially when you hear that “95% of all small businesses” line you probably think that this 95% employ about 95% of all of the people working for small businesses. You could think that, but you would be wrong.
The trick here is that the vast majority of America’s small businesses are just that … small. I owned a title abstract business in the 80’s that had one employee. My wife owned a travel agency that had two employees. Neither of these small businesses came anywhere near the $250,000 line.

When you think about it you will understand that the important statistic here is the percentage of small business employees who will be affected, not the percentage of small businesses.

The October 21st edition of The Wall Street Journal addressed this issue in an article entitled “Socking It to Small Businesses.” The WSJ reports that Obama is right “that most of the 35 million small businesses in America have a net income of less than $250,000, hire only a few workers, and stay in business for less than four years.” There’s more to the story though: “.. the point is that it is the most successful small and medium-sized businesses that create most of the new jobs.. And they are precisely the businesses that will be slammed by Mr. Obama’s tax increase.” The Senate Finance Committee reports that of those who file income taxes in the highest two tax brackets; three out of four are the small business owners Obama wants to tax.

The WSJ reports that the National Federation of Independent Business says that only 10% of small businesses with one to nine employees will be hit by Obama’s tax increase. However, almost 20% of the small businesses that employ from 10 to 19 people will get nailed, and 50% of small businesses with over 20 employees get punished.

Again … it is not the percentage of businesses who will have to pay the increased taxes; it’s the percentage of the total of small business employees who work for those businesses. The Obama campaign is counting on you not making that distinction; and they know the media won’t make it for you; so Obama’s “95% of all small businesses don’t make $250,000” line will probably rule the day.

Come on folks. These are your jobs we’re talking about here. It’s time to take your blinders off and see through some of this Obama rhetoric. The Obama campaign has some wonderful people working for them to tell them just how to parse words to hide intent and meaning. Just because they’re trying to fool you doesn’t mean that you have to be so easily suckered. When Obama talks about change .. he may well mean that you are going to have to change jobs. Now that’s change you can believe in, right?
Pandering to the Unions .. at Your Expense.

Now since we’re talking about jobs here, you need to be up to speed on The Messiah’s “Employee Free Choice Act.” Let me step out on a limb here and say that applying the words “free choice” to Obama’s plan to eliminate secret ballots in union elections is like applying the words “fun sex” to an act of rape. Freedom has nothing to do with Obama’s plan, and fun has nothing to do with rape.

Going in you need to recognize that union membership has been falling for decades. You only see growth in union membership in government employee unions. This, of course, is troubling to union leaders. It is also troubling to Democrats. Unions, you see, almost exclusively support Democrat candidates, both with money and time. Big money and lots of time … and it’s all behind Obama’s candidacy.

To know what Obama is up to here, you need to know how union organizing works under the current law. Union organizers circulate a petition among employees. Employees are asked to sign a card saying that they would like to be represented by a union in their workplace. If a majority of the workers sign the cards the employer has the option of immediately recognizing the union and allowing them to organize the workplace. More often the employer will call for an election – an election using secret ballots. Every employee will be given the opportunity to express their desire to join or not to join a union in secret. Their co-workers will not know how they voted. They can prance around the workplace touting their support of unionization all they want in order to impress or appease their fellow workers, especially those who are trying to organize the union, but then vote “no” on the secret ballot if that’s how they truly feel.

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How, you might ask, do Democrats feel about the secret ballot in union elections? For a clue let’s go to a letter from 16 House Democrats dated August 29, 2001. The letter was written on the letterhead of California Congressman George Miller, a Democrat representing the 7th District of California. That letter reads:

[Letterhead of George Miller, Congress of the United States]
Junta Local de Conciliacion y Arbitraje del Estado de Puebla
Lic. Armando Poxqui Quintero
7 Norte Numero 1006 Altos
Colonia Centro
Puebla, Mexico C.P. 7200
Dear members of the Junta Local de Conciliacion y Arbitraje of the state of Puebla.
As members of Congress of the United States who are deeply concerned with international labor standards and the role of labor rights in international trade agreements, we are writing to encourage you to use the secret ballot in all union recognition elections.
We understand that the secret ballot is allowed for, but not required, by Mexican labor law. However, we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise chose.
We respect Mexico as an important neighbor and trading partner, and we feel that the increased use of the secret ballow in union recognition elections will help bring real democracy to the Mexican workplace.
Signed:
George Miller
Bernard Sanders
Lane Evans
Marcy Kaptur
William J. Coyne
Bob Filner
Martin Olav Sabo
Joe Baca
Dennis J. Kucinich
Fortney Pete Stark
James P. McGovern
Barney Frank
Zoe Lofgren
Calvin M. Dooley
Barbara Lee
Lloyd Doggett
​

So there you go. These 16 Democrats are on the record as being solidly in favor of using secret ballots in union recognition elections. So far, so good … because that, as they point out in their letter, is clearly the right stance.


That brings us to piece of legislation – a piece of Obama sponsored legislation --designated as H.R. 800, the Employee Free Choice Act. Would you care to guess just what H.R. 800 does? Well, that’s simple. It will eliminate the secret ballot in union recognition elections. You got it! Obama has decided to really do something nice for the union bosses that are supporting him in this election, and he is determined to do away with secret ballots in union elections. When H.R. 800 gets passed … and trust me, with Barack Obama in the White House, this thing will become law … the union organizers will visit all of the workers, perhaps even visiting some of them in their homes, and “urge” them to sign the card calling for a union. I can hear it now: “Mrs. Johnson, wouldn’t you and your children want your husband to be represented by our union at his job?” Now put yourself in the worker’s place!


Are you going to say no? This organizer is sitting in your living room looking at you and your wife and saying “You do want to be represented by our union in your workplace, don’t you?” And you’re going to tell him no?


Are you getting the big picture here? This is nothing less than Barack Obama and his Democrat pals legitimizing union intimidation in the workplace. If you don’t see that, then there is virtually no hope for you when it comes to understanding basic politics. It’s payback the unions time .. pay them back for all of that financial support and all of those volunteer hours. Besides … the more union members there are the more union dues the union bosses have to spread to Democrats as campaign contributions.

But – we’re saved, right? After all, we have those 16 Democrats who signed that letter to Mexico. What was it they said? Oh yeah: “ … we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise chose.” So these 16 Democrats will certainly put up a spirited defense of secret ballots in union organizing elections, right?


Well … um … maybe not. You see, four of these congressmen (Dooley, Sabo, Evans and Coyne) are no longer in the Congress. One of the signers, Bernie Sanders, is now a Senator. That leaves 11 of the 16 signees still in the house to defend the principal of the secret ballot.


I’m afraid we have a small problem though. It seems that every one of the 11 remaining signees is now a sponsor of H.R. 800. In fact, the so-called Employee Free Choice Act was actually introduced by none other than George Miller – the very California Democrat on whose letterhead that letter to Mexico was written. Bernie Sanders is a sponsor of the same legislation in the Senate along with Barack Obama. No surprise .

On the one hand we have these Democrats writing a letter extolling the virtues of a secret ballot in union organizing elections, and then they sponsor a bill eliminating those very secret ballots! And here’s Barack Obama pledging to sign the bill as soon as it comes to his desk! So what changed between 2001 and 2007? What happened that made these 12 Democrats go from believing that a secret ballot in a union election was “absolutely necessary,” to introducing a bill eliminating those “absolutely necessary” secret ballots? Control of congress; that’s what changed. In 2001 the Republicans ran the show. In 2007 it was the Democrats … and it was time to return some favors to union bosses. Do you know what you’re seeing here? You’re seeing just how much power unions have over Barack Obama and the Democrat party. It doesn’t matter what kind of letter you wrote, or what stance you took in the past --- when we say “frog” you had better jump.


Let me tell you what is going to happen as soon as Barack Obama is elected. Employers are going to look at the so-called Employee Free Choice Act and they’re going to be very afraid. They know what a union can do to their business and their profitability. Just look at our auto industry. So employers are going to immediately start working to minimize the damage. How do you do that? Well, automation is one way. Go ahead and buy that machinery you need to automate much of your workplace. That will allow you to get rid of these employees before they can unionize. You might also want to consider the possibility of moving some of those jobs overseas where union intimidation might not be such a negative factor in your business operations.

When Obama gets his unionization by intimidation thing in place – and he most certainly will – jobs are going to be lost and businesses will fail. This is the price Obama is willing to pay to pay back the unions who have supported him.

Just another reason to vote for The Chosen One, right?


The Supreme Court


This is getting to be a bit long. We’re over 6,200 words here. So let’s end this message to the undecided voter with a few words about the Supreme Court.


It is quite possible that Barack Obama will get to make one, maybe two Supreme Court appointments before he’s through in Washington. It is also possible that he will have a filibuster-proof Senate to help him ram those choices through.


I’m a lawyer, and I’ve always had this strange idea that the U.S. Supreme Court should base its decisions on the supreme law of our land, our Constitution. Many people think differently these days. A recent and rather shocking survey showed that around 80% of people who support Barack Obama believe that the Supreme Court should base its decisions not on the Constitution, but on what’s “fair.” Egad! On the other hand, the strong majority of McCain voters believe that the Supremes should look to our Constitution as the final authority.


Let’s just make this short and sweet, because I know you want to get out of here. If Barack Obama gets those two nominations, and if the Democrat Senate rubber-stamps them, then we are going to have a Supreme Court making decisions based on their liberal definition of “fairness” with some consideration to foreign court decisions tossed in. This is perhaps Obama’s greatest opportunity to do permanent damage to our Republic; permanent and irreparable damage. It’s one thing when Barack Obama talks about wealth seizure and redistribution in terms of “fairness.” It’s quite another when that talk is legitimized by a Supreme Court decision.


So, dear undecided voters … as Og Mandino (a great American) once said: “Use wisely your power of choice.” There’s a lot hanging in the balance.

Share your thoughts, but keep it clean.

 

[The Senator]

Boortz is bloating his "race card" argument. Few people out there are equating the terms "socialist" or "skinny" to racism; however, it should be understandable-- and entirely justified-- that many of us believe that bringing up Jeremiah Wright as a reason to vote against Obama is doing so on a racial level. Why? Because what Wright said was obviously racist, but the fact that many conservative commentators continue to drill what Wright said into the heads of their readers, listeners, viewers, etc. feels as if they are only doing to so engage in race baiting.

Obviously, this is a tricky subject. But the fact of the matter is, no one would bring this up unless they were trying to play on this fear of multiculturalism which exists in the hearts of many white, rural, working class voters. Not all of these voters think this way, not even a majority of them do. But there are many who are indeed afraid of a black president, who still consider Obama a "terrorist" or a "Muslim," who use what Wright said as the crux of their argument against voting for Obama.

We see it everywhere, masked as something else though. People will say things like "well, I don't want to vote for a socialist," but then insert the Wright card as a footnote. And that, to me, appears as though Wright and the issue of race is actually what is at the forefront of their rationale against voting for Obama. I mean, why else insert Wright and Obama's connections to his church into the conversation, if you are most concerned about the issues the man is running on?

Additionally, the ridiculously consistent rhetoric from the right that prominent figures are only supporting Obama because he is black is another example of using the race card. To claim that Colin Powell endorsed Obama solely because he is black is childish and inane, but I wouldn't expect anything less from Rush Limbaugh and many of the conservatives out there who have parroted that argument. Powell explicitly laid down the reasons why he was endorsing Obama, all having to deal with policy. And if Powell was going to endorse Obama based on race, then it would make more sense for this endorsement to have come months ago, rather than now, when he was first grilled on who he would endorse before the parties had their conventions. The fact that this "they're only voting for him because he's black!" argument keep coming up shows that many conservatives out there are throwing whatever they can to the wall, hoping that it sticks. No, what Rush Limbaugh said was an opinion-- not a fact, and no one can claim that Powell endorsed Obama because they are of the same color. To say so is race baiting at its finest, and magnifies the idea that the conservatives are using race baiting-- to an extent-- to override much of Obama's candidacy.

To put this in greater perspective, two of the most prominent black politicians in this country-- John Lewis and James Clyburn-- did not initially endorse Obama. They supported Clinton, and later switched when Obama began gaining momentum and the primary campaign reared its ugly head. So to say that black politicians are only supporting Obama because he is black is false and inadequate.

 

[SuBe]

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card ​

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That's where you are right now.
It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.
This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.

What do you think?

 

[Etienne]

EDIT: I was about to post the news article from Pittsburgh and Drudge about the woman (who is a McCain/Palin supporter) who got a "B" carved in her face by an Obama supporter, but now I see no news articles. Sorry.

 

[Paradoxium]

[/I]

What do you think?
[/SIZE][/FONT]

He is right in that the Democrats laying the blame solely on the Republicans as absurd. But it is a fact the Republicans did have a similar hand. For an example, in the Economy Thread (powered by Paradoxium t, I posted an article on Karl Rove and his hand in this crisis (see Republicans) which mirrors the CRA/ACORN situation (see Democrats).

There is a real slant in Obama's favor, but in the sense the media keeps harping his solution and approach to the financial crisis (which is wrong, period). Obama is framing the situation incorrectly and McCain is stupidly following this same frame too. Both the Republicans and Democrats are applying variations of the Keynesian economic idealogy. Conservative Keynesianism and liberal Keynesianism is the same thing in the end. Someone needs to chuck this ideology in the garbage. Yes even god damn Reagan is a Keynesian to some extent.

And speaking of Reagan: the media also loves to point at Reagan's deregulation - which is not the problem - but EVEN if you follow this logic, they fail to mention Jimmy Carter started the deregulation bandwagon anyways. In addition, deregulation does not mean government intervention disappears (see Laws of Intended Consequences), nor does it mean private regulation is gone either - which I is quite effective (see Insurance industry).

It's time they actually tried capitalism for once; not a perversion of it.

 

[lazur]

This is a place to share articles and columns you've read, to discuss with others. I've posted an article below written by Neal Boortz, a Libertarian Talk Show Host, to the Undecided Voter. I urge you to read this article, share your thoughts, but keep it clean. This Thread doesn't have to be about a single topic, but an open discussion about the articles you've posted.

You can post right leaning columns, or left leaning columns, but I don't want News Articles. This is a place for discussion about Commentary, not news.



Continued Below.

SB, *awesome* op piece from Boortz. It's too bad most of it will fall on deaf ears. People just aren't interested in the cost of an Obama victory. Instead, they'd rather focus on the $150,000 in clothing the RNC provided to Palin than talk about Obama's income redistribution 'spread the wealth around' mentality that promotes class warfare and the loss of our businesses to other countries.

 

[SuBe]

SB, *awesome* op piece from Boortz. It's too bad most of it will fall on deaf ears. People just aren't interested in the cost of an Obama victory. Instead, they'd rather focus on the $150,000 in clothing the RNC provided to Palin than talk about Obama's income redistribution 'spread the wealth around' mentality that promotes class warfare and the loss of our businesses to other countries.

Thanks Laz, all I can do is share, I don't even know how many people actually read it. It's probably too many words for some of the posters here, but, he really hits on some great points.

 

[lazur]

Thanks Laz, all I can do is share, I don't even know how many people actually read it. It's probably too many words for some of the posters here, but, he really hits on some great points.

I read it, and it was an excellent 'neutral' write-up on the reality of what an Obama Presidency will be like. Just look back at the Jimmy Carter years for a good historical backdrop, since Obama's tax plans aren't much different from Carter's.

What I found especially interesting were the facts surrounding Obama's claims that most small businesses wouldn't be taxed, when indeed they will be.

If Obama gets elected, say goodbye to the economy and say hello to oppressive government control, as well as Bush-like spending.

 

[Malice]

I love the Orson Scott Card article.

 

[Etienne]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/23/navarrette.liberals/index.html

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- I thought liberals were supposed to be good-hearted, open-minded and non-judgmental.

Tell that to the angry Left's favorite piñata, Sarah Palin. As far as liberals are concerned, Palin can do no right just as Barack Obama and Joe Biden can do no wrong. In fact, Biden is catching more passes than an NFL wide receiver.

As Palin herself pointed out in a recent CNN interview, imagine if she had been the one to imply that electing Obama would invite calamity. Biden does it, and the media shrug.

I also thought the Democratic Party was supposed to go to bat for the little guy, the everyday Joe the Plumber.

Tell that to Joe Wurzelbacher, the Ohio resident who got his 15 minutes -- and 40 lashes -- because he dared question Obama about his tax plan. Obama insists that the plan would raise taxes only on those Americans earning more than $250,000 per year. It was then Obama made his clumsy "spread the wealth" comment.

What was Joe thinking: that we live in a democracy where everyday Americans who pay the salaries of elected officials can dare question their policies? That just isn't done.

To prove it, the elites who run the Democratic Party -- along with their surrogates in the media and organized labor -- went after the plumber.

We now know that Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher owes back taxes, doesn't have a plumbing license (he told the Associated Press he doesn't need one because he works for someone else's company), and may not be registered to vote.

Commenting on a CNN.com story, one condescending reader wrote that Joe the Plumber should pipe down and "get back in my bathroom and unclog the toilet."

Even Biden and Obama got in a few licks. Biden quipped to Jay Leno that Democrats wanted to take care of "Joe-the-real-plumber-with-a-license," and Obama sarcastically asked supporters, "how many plumbers do you know making $250,000 a year?" The implication being that Joe the Plumber isn't who he pretends to be.

What worries me is that the Democrats aren't what they pretend to be.

Obama supporters like to talk about how the Democratic presidential nominee has lived the American Dream. So why is it to so hard for them to conceive of a situation where someone dreams of earning more money a few years from now than they earn today. Has Barack Obama consumed all the social mobility this country has to offer, so there isn't any left for the rest of us?

Now, the Obama-Biden boosters have refocused their attention on their earlier irritant, Sarah Palin.

The latest media template is that the vice presidential nominee is a drag on the GOP ticket. Pundits detect a backlash, not just among Democrats who love to hate Sarah Palin but also among women, independents and seniors. They cite polls showing Palin with an unfavorable rating of 50 percent.

So what? We're in the post-Clinton, post-Bush era of polarization where any politician with a pulse -- Sorry, Joe Biden -- will be loved by half the country and hated by the other half.

It's surreal. Before McCain put Palin on the ticket, he was getting 200 people at campaign rallies, and now, when he appears when Palin, he gets 20,000. Yes, definitely a drag. iReport.com: Rock star welcome for Palin in Ohio

McCain oversold it when he said Palin was the most qualified vice presidential candidate in recent history. Better than Dick Cheney? Could she be worse? Obama might have paid Biden the same compliment if his running mate hadn't already told supporters that Hillary Clinton would have been a better choice.

Then there is the faux-scandal that the Republican National Committee shelled out $150,000 in the past several weeks on Palin and her family for campaign wardrobe, accessories, makeup, etc.

Many Americans don't see why it's a story. Fellow hockey mom Page Growney of New Canaan, Conn., asked The Associated Press, "What did you want to see her in, a turtleneck from L.L. Bean?"

Still, we're told, this tempest in a Gucci bag has some Republicans worrying that shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue might undermine Palin's everywoman image. To think, just last month, the criticism was that Sarah the Moose Hunter wasn't sufficiently sophisticated or glamorous. Now her wardrobe signals the hockey mom is high-maintenance.

Just how many more caricatures -- some of them contradictory -- can we expect the left to throw at Sarah Palin before time runs out on this election?

 

[The Senator]

Can we stop with the Joe the Plumber horse **** already? Seriously, the McCain campaign has universally annoyed everyone in this country with that garbage. The plumber only appeals to the conservative base and NO ONE else.

 

[SuBe]

I thought it was a good article.

 

[The Senator]

It's an awful article because it continues the McCain campaign rhetoric of "Democrats don't care about Joe the Plumber!" which has polluted this campaign for the past week and a half.

It also acts as if plumbers are lower-middle class... when most plumbers make six figures per year...

Not to mention there's a good reason most liberals don't like Sarah Palin, and it has to do with the fact that she's bat**** insane.

 

[SuBe]

It's an awful article because it continues the McCain campaign rhetoric of "Democrats don't care about Joe the Plumber!" which has polluted this campaign for the past week and a half.

It also acts as if plumbers are lower-middle class... when most plumbers make six figures per year...

Not to mention there's a good reason most liberals don't like Sarah Palin, and it has to do with the fact that she's bat**** insane.

Didn't Obama say that he didn't know of a plumber that made $250,000? Isn't it more of an issue of Small Business instead of an issue about Plumbing?

 

[The Senator]

Didn't Obama say that he didn't know of a plumber that made $250,000? Isn't it more of an issue of Small Business instead of an issue about Plumbing?

The issue is that John McCain is making it seem as though Barack Obama is going to tax all middle class roughnecks because he has stated that he will tax Joe the Douc-- er, Plumber. Joe the Douc-- Plumber owns several small businesses and has an income greater than $250,000, whereas most people who have such hard, labor-demanding technical jobs don't even come close to matching that number.

It is an issue of John McCain bloating this ridiculous anecdote out of proportion, to a point where teachers think they are going to be taxed under Obama's plan, which is not at all what will happen... regardless of what the fear mongering partisan hacks on the right would like us to think...

 

[SuBe]

The issue is that John McCain is making it seem as though Barack Obama is going to tax all middle class roughnecks because he has stated that he will tax Joe the Douc-- er, Plumber. Joe the Douc-- Plumber owns several small businesses and has an income greater than $250,000, whereas most people who have such hard, labor-demanding technical jobs don't even come close to matching that number.

It is an issue of John McCain bloating this ridiculous anecdote out of proportion, to a point where teachers think they are going to be taxed under Obama's plan, which is not at all what will happen... regardless of what the fear mongering partisan hacks on the right would like us to think...

Now, is his job him being a plumber, or is his job being the owner of a Plumbing Business?

 

[lazur]

It's an awful article because it continues the McCain campaign rhetoric of "Democrats don't care about Joe the Plumber!" which has polluted this campaign for the past week and a half.

It also acts as if plumbers are lower-middle class... when most plumbers make six figures per year...

Not to mention there's a good reason most liberals don't like Sarah Palin, and it has to do with the fact that she's bat**** insane.

I disagree. People aren't saying that DEMOCRATS don't care about Joe the Plumber, since most Democrats are decent people. But I think you'd have a hard tome showing that OBAMA cares about Joe the Plumber or any other small business.

 

[SuBe]

Decoding Barack
by Neal Boortz

The election is now eight days way. If you've made up your mind for Obama; or if you're trying to noodle through some of the things he's been saying on the campaign trail, this should help. And if you’re voting for Obama, clearly you need help. I've taken four statements that The Chosen One repeats at almost every campaign rally. Now these statements are pretty powerful ... if unchallenged ... and we know that the MoveOn Media isn't exactly what we would call "eager" to challenge God's Candidate on any of these issues.
So, here we go again .. this simple talk show host (right wing, hate-filled shock jock, I believe they call us) is going to use some basic logic and the ability to actually read newspapers to catch you up to speed on just what the Big BO is saying here. Now if you're educated in our wonderful government schools you may find this challenging. Stick with it. In spite of what the government has done to you, you can generate some new brain cells that will help you deal with this stuff. It would also help if you got your campaign news from somewhere other than Saturday Night Live.
Here we go, front and center with Barack Obama!
"I'm going to cut taxes for 95% of Americans."
This Obama promise has already been pretty much debunked in the media. The problem is that it hasn't been debunked on the Black Entertainment Television network or on Inside Edition or Entertainment Tonight. Until these television outlets bring forth the facts most of Obama's supporters won't know the truth.
And what is the truth? The truth is that almost one-half of working Americans eligible to vote don't pay federal income taxes in the first place. This brings forth the interesting question of how do you cut taxes for people who don't pay taxes. What Obama has done here is change the definition of "tax cut."
It used to be that when the government walked up to someone who had just received their paycheck and said 'Gimme some of that," and the government then gave that money to someone else who had not earned it; that was called welfare. Now apparently you can't get welfare if you're working ... so we'll just call it income seizure and redistribution. Under Obama a couple earning, for example, $70,000 and owing no federal income taxes at all will get several checks from Obama's federal taxpayer-funded treasury. These checks will be called "tax cuts."
So .. for those who don't pay taxes, here are some of the "tax cut" checks you’ll be getting from The Chosen One. I'm taking some literary license here and replacing the words "tax credit" with the word "payment." That literary flourish brings us much closer to the truth. Here are your goodies; come and get ‘em:

• A $500 "make work pay" payment.
• A $4,000 payment for college tuition.
• A payment equal to 10% of your mortgage interest
• A payment equal to 50% of the amount of money you put into a savings account up to $1000.
• A payment equal to 50% of the amount of money you pay for child care up to $6000.
• A payment of up to $7,000 if you purchase a "clean car." By that Obama means an environmentally correct car.
• Plus ... an expansion of the earned income tax credit .. increased payments on top of your earnings if the government doesn't feel you are earning enough.

There you go ... Obama's "tax cuts." Sounds pretty good, doesn't it. Well, I guess it is, if you're not too successful it IS pretty good. Remember, the harder you work the lower these payments get. Barack Obama's tax plans are all about punishing success and rewarding failure. He understands that if it weren't for failures, Democrats would be scrounging in the alleys for votes.
It's rather ironic that the Obama campaign will go to the mat with critics over the definition of "socialist," but feel absolutely free to change the definition of "tax cut" to anything that suits them.
"95% of small businesses won't pay any more taxes."
Once people started hearing that the very people that Obama wanted to raise taxes on are the people we depend on for jobs, The BO campaign had to come up with a line to neuter the "small business" argument. Barack Obama knows he's in trouble if the voters find out that 70% of all extant jobs are in the small business sector and that 80% of all new jobs are coming from small businesses. So, Obama comes up with this line about 95% of small businesses not paying any more taxes under his plan
Here's the trick. Let me illustrate reality with a simple comparison. Let's say that we have 1000 small businesses. About 950 of them, that would be 95%, employ one or two people each for a total employment figure of 1,200. Now let's assume that the other 50 businesses employ anywhere from 20 people to hundreds of people for a total of about 250,000 workers. If someone comes along and says 95% of small businesses won't be affected by his tax increases, how do you feel? You know that the tax increase is going to slam those businesses that employ 250,000 workers, while leaving the 95% of businesses that employ just 1,200 people alone. Quite a deal, huh. Aren't you impressed?
The point here is that it's not the percentage of small businesses your tax increases hit, it's the percentage of small business employees. Unfortunately that nuance is lost on the majority of voters educated by the government, and the MoveOn Media sure isn’t going to take the time to explain it to you.
"John McCain voted with George Bush 90% of the time."
First of all, George Bush doesn't cast votes in the U.S. Senate, though McCain and Obama do. The best way to judge how they vote is to see how often they vote with their respective parties. You might want to get those nuisance resolutions proclaiming the need for a colonoscopy every once in a while out of the way. That would leave some key votes for you to consider. The Congressional Research Service did the work. They looked at votes for Obama and McCain on KEY issues. The results? Barack Obama voted with Democrats 97% of the time. John McCain voted with the Republicans 79% of the time. Now .. just sit on your hands and wait for the MoveOn Media to report that one. Sit on your hands, but for God's sake don't hold your breath.
"John McCain wants to tax your health insurance benefits."
He's right, but here's the rest of the story. Let's say that you and your brother work for different companies. Your company provides you with health insurance. Your brother has to buy his own. Your boss gets a tax deduction for the cost of your health insurance. Your brother does not get a tax deduction for the cost of his health insurance. In effect, he is paying much more than you are for the same policy. Not fair. There's a reason for this. For decades government has wanted to coerce you into getting insurance through your employer. This gets you acclimated to the idea of someone else -- someone besides yourself -- is responsible for your health care. The end result is that the government, in effect, subsidizes the cost of your health insurance, but not your brother's. Now McCain has this idea of a $5,000 tax credit for every family to pay for their own health insurance policy. To make this work everyone has to start from the same starting line. Remember, you're subsidized, your brother is not. So McCain takes away the tax deduction your employer gets for your health insurance. There ... now we're all of equal standing when the $5,000 tax credits start coming out.
Now that wasn't too hard, was it?
Now .. just in case you've read something here, heard something on my show or gathered some information from some other source that might cause you to switch your vote from Obama to McCain ... just remember. You're a racist. There is only one reason NOT to vote for Barack Obama, and that's if you're a robe-wearing, cross-burning Klansman. Just so you know. You’re going to have that on your conscience.

 

[SoulManX]

Good stuff SB.

 

[SuBe]

Thanks soulmanx. I got you pm btw. I tried to reply but you need to fix you settings to allow pm reciepts. I want to have that conversation with you.

 

[SuBe]

OBAMA'S ATTRACTION TO MARXISM

Finally, someone ELSE is talking about his first book.

Now ... first of all. You need to understand that what I'll be talking about in this segment is totally and completely off limits. You're going to read some notes about Barack Obama's past statements and associations .. negative statements and negative associations. You will not read about these associations in the mainstream media. That would be because the mainstream media – and by that I mean the Beltway and New York City media – are totally and completely dedication to the election of Barack Obama as our next president. For the reporters and editors that comprise what used to be our most trusted source for news all pretentions of objectivity have been out the window. The new standards for reporting a news story are who, what, when, where, how and will it hurt Barack Obama. If the story can hurt Obama, and if it can be quietly killed, so it shall be.

Question for you, dear listener. If someone could come up with something that John McCain wrote a book or an article about 20 years ago in which he detailed his attraction to members of the Ku Klux Klan during his college years? Do you think for a minute that this would not be at the top of the front page of every newspaper in the country? Not to mention leading every television newscast.

But what if we have a candidate writing about his attraction to Marxism during his college years? News? Well, if that person is going to be on the presidential ballot on election day, you would think it would be news. Well .. that person IS on the ballot on election day, and it is most certainly NOT news.

Now I've been telling you this for months. But who am I? Just a radio talk show host without a television show. But I read Barack Obama's "Dreams From my Father" several months ago ... and there they were; Barack's expressions of affection for his Marxist and socialist friends and mentor of his college days and before.

Finally, it's becoming news. Well .. news to some outlets like the one liberals just love to hate, Fox News. Here's your link to a story appearing yesterday on FoxNews.com. The title is "Obama Affinity to Marxists Dates Back to College Days."

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully," the Democratic presidential candidate wrote in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." "The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists." These are the friends that Obama says he "chose carefully." That's carefully?

Obama's interest in leftist politics continued after he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, venturing to the East Village for what he called "the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union."

"At the entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature."

"Sometimes attended" socialist conferences? Oh... and by the way, they were selling Marxist stuff at the entrance. Oh, and another thing, one of my mentors, Frank Marshall Davis, was a Communist. But hey ... I'm clean.

Question to Obama, if you were so careful with your friends in college, why wouldn't you continue to use the same level of judgment when choosing your friends to help you get elected ... i.e. Bill Ayers? Hey, maybe you chose him, and Jeremiah Write just as carefully, right?

CAN ANYBODY TELL ME WHEN OBAMA HAS ADVOCATED FOR LESS GOVERNMENT?

I didn't think so. MSNBC published an "analysis" of the campaign by Howard Fineman. It is clear that Fineman, like the rest of his mainstream media cohorts, is in the tank for Barack Obama. And he is just doing his job to make sure that he gets elected next week. So here is Fineman's advice to Barack Obama supporters: Stop predicting that the Democrats will sweep into the White House and Congress come January with a mandate to expand Big Government ... you are going to scare away swing voters. And even if Obama wins, these swing voters are going to be skeptical of Obama which will underscore his ability to rule as a "uniter"!

So what Fineman is basically advocating is that Barack Obama needs to lie to the voters about the true nature of his socialist policies. Obama needs to tell voters that "he doesn't like government for its own sake, but for the sake of individuals and families. He has to keep explaining that he wants to put money in a hundred million pockets and purses (even those of the top 5 percent or so whom he'd have pay more in taxes) so that all of us, even the rich, can benefit from a thriving economy. He has to make sure that he isn't advocating government-run — in contrast to government-aided — health care ... he also needs to reassure voters that he will not necessarily march in lockstep with resurgent Democrats who will want to launch a top-to-bottom New New Deal and reverse the Reagan Revolution 28 years after it took place."

Are you listening to this, folks? Tell me how a man who is proposing $800 billion in new spending is someone who doesn't like government for its own sake. Tell me how he is going to put hundreds of millions of dollars into the pockets of people who don't even pay taxes. I'll tell you how, by taxing the achievers, by taxing the small businesses who create most of the jobs in this country ... tell me how our economy is going to thrive if Barack Obama uses your tax dollars to give hand outs to people who do not pay taxes. How is our economy going to thrive if the government gives to those who are not the achievers. Let me know how many times you have gone to a poor person asking for a job. And will someone please tell me what the benefits would be of a "government-aided" healthcare system? Where has that worked?

This MSNBC article gets even worse, folks. The new line that is emerging is that Barack Obama's beliefs in wealth redistribution aren't all that bad – because the government already redistributes wealth. Are you really buying this? Here's an example from this article by Howard Fineman: "We know that we need government. In one way or another, almost every American politician is or was a 'redistributionist.' We do it all the time. Redistributing is a good bit of what government in fact does, for better or worse. Every time we monkey with the tax code or federal spending we are 'redistributing' benefits —whether it is to welfare recipients or to the top bracket, or to one region or industry versus another."

Since when did your wealth become a "benefit" for the government to redistribute? I believe that wealth is something that you earn. A "benefit", to the best of my knowledge, implies an act of kindness or something that promotes well-being. My wealth does not belong to the government, therefore it is not the government's job to take it in order to be kind or promote well-being.

MORE REDISTRIBUTION FROM OBAMA?

Something else has surfaced from Obama's past. In 1996, Obama apparently spoke at a meeting for the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Here's a recap of what Obama had to say at the meeting:

Barack Obama observed that Martin Luther King's March on Washington in the 1960s wasn't simply about civil rights but demanded jobs as well. Now the issue is again coming to the front, but he wished the issue was on the Democratic agenda not just on [Pat] Buchanan's.

One of the themes that has emerged in Barack Obama's campaign is "what does it take to create productive communities", not just consumptive communities. It is an issue that joins some of the best instincts of the conservatives with the better instincts of the left. He felt the state government has three constructive roles to play.

The first is "human capital development". By this he meant public education, welfare reform, and a "workforce preparation strategy". Public education requires equality in funding. It's not that money is the only solution to public education's problems but it's a start toward a solution. The current proposals for welfare reform are intended to eliminate welfare but it's also true that the status quo is not tenable. A true welfare system would provide for medical care, child care and job training. While Barack Obama did not use this term, it sounded very much like the "social wage" approach used by many social democratic labor parties. By "workforce preparation strategy", Barack Obama simply meant a coordinated, purposeful program of job training instead of the ad hoc, fragmented approach used by the State of Illinois today.

The state government can also play a role in redistribution, the allocation of wages and jobs. As Barack Obama noted, when someone gets paid $10 million to eliminate 4,000 jobs, the voters in his district know this is an issue of power not economics. The government can use as tools labor law reform, public works and contracts.

What is it going to take folks? Don't you see what we have here? This man is a dedicated leftist who is really really fond of basic Marxist ideas, including redistribution of wealth! He has no appreciation for free enterprise. Everything to him is about government. Only government can provide. Only government can determine who has what. Only government can solve problems. How in the hell can the people of a (supposedly) free nation take this man and elevate him to the position of president?

Our Republic is threatened by this man and his ideas. Time to mature and think about what you're going to do next week.

 

[lazur]

Didn't Obama say that he didn't know of a plumber that made $250,000? Isn't it more of an issue of Small Business instead of an issue about Plumbing?

Never mind that Obama's 250k figure dropped to 200k in one of his campaign ads, and then to 150k according to Biden.

Number one problem with Obama? He's proven his own words to be untrustworthy. Some people call that lying.

 

[Ahura Mazda]

I must say these articles are just as biaised as anything else. And the reality of all these economic policies when they will actually be applied are likely to be very different then what is portrayed on paper.

I am no left wing supporter; not by a mile and I actualy have read the works of Marx, Hegel and studied Keynesian economics. I have an understanding of them even though I am not an economist. I really think some of what is being said is quite ridiculous especially given the laws that have been passed recently.

Is Obama the ideal choice of who I would like to see as president? He is not but for me he is the only choice when you look at the alternative of the McCain/Palin ticket. the fact she was even elected as governor scares me. And to be brutally honest if McCain had chosen someone like Romney or if Romney was the Presidential candidate I may have supported someone else. But there is no way in hell I would support someone who chooses a running mate who seems wholly unqualified to serve in such a capacity especially when he is a cancer survivor and 72 years old.

The other point most people are ignoring is America's place in the international community. During the Reagan years, it was considerred by most as a benevelent force whereas now the general public outside of the US have a very bad opinion of the Country, one which does have an adverse impact on it. McCain along with Palin I believe would degrade the US's position internationally even further.