The open political discussion thread. Read the first post!

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by Bob_VT

My take on the world's situation ........... Our biggest enemy ....... the most evil....... the one I fear most ................. the one responsible for brainwashing and causing panic ............. the MEDIA.

The media crucified Richard Jewell, the media destroyed Bush, elected Obama...... the media can not go 5 minutes without using the words .... the state of the economy.

The Media gave Obama a great deal of help, true. They covered up his gaffes while emphasizing the gaffes of Sarah Palin. How many Obama supporters heard that clip of Obama talking of the 57 states that he's visited? I bet if Palin had said that we'd have heard it on the hour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrsBKGpwi58

How about the day that Obama hemmed and hawed about "breathilyzers" and other non-sense because he didn't have a teleprompter? Didn't see that on TV, did you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxxxGUeZtno

Fortunately the Media is destroying itself. Newspapers are on the edge of going out of business. It's too easy to get news from the Internet. You don't get the grotesque bias from the Internet if you shop around.

TV news shows are following in suit.

Our biggest problem is not the Media. It's a public which refuses to think things through to their logical conclusions. We get the government that we deserve because we refuse to keep good books ourselves.

A populace that kept track of things would realize that you cannot spend money you don't have endlessly. They'd realize how often the Government has failed to deliver on its promises.

They may not become Conservatives either, they might demand more prudent spending and more realistic taxation than Marxist "From each according to their ability" income taxes. They might want to question why beer is legal but dope is illegal and that the US has two million people in jail.

H.L. Mencken said a long time ago that the idea of politics is to give people what they want, good and hard.

We're getting it now. Between Cap 'n Trade, grotesque deficit spending and hyper regulation this is going to be a hard country to make a good living.

Yes, we'll see if people finally wake up in this country. Got a feeling it's starting to happen, but the nub is what conclusions that they'll draw.

Gene

[jambo101]

Originally Posted by GeneW

Yes, we'll see if people finally wake up in this country. Got a feeling it's starting to happen, but the nub is what conclusions that they'll draw.

Gene

I'd say the country did wake up,they threw the 8yr legacy of George Bush and the republicans under the bus.Listening to some republicans you'd think Americas problems all started when Obama was elected,sorry but 8yrs of Bush running the country like the old wild west led to 2 wars and a close call not going into 3 others (Iran,Syria,Afganistan),he let the money people run rampant with the financial institutions of America to the point the country came close to bankruptcy while the fat cats just stuffed their pockets with your money,and somehow this is all Obama's fault?It amazes me that Bush walks away with no accountability for his actions and the best the republicans can do is blame Obama for everything So glad about the 2 term limit,i can only imagine what another term of Bush would have done to the country.

[SailDesign]

Originally Posted by jambo101

I'd say the country did wake up,they threw the 8yr legacy of George Bush and the republicans under the bus.Listening to some republicans you'd think Americas problems all started when Obama was elected,sorry but 8yrs of Bush running the country like the old wild west led to 2 wars and a close call not going into 3 others (Iran,Syria,Afganistan),he let the money people run rampant with the financial institutions of America to the point the country came close to bankruptcy while the fat cats just stuffed their pockets with your money,and somehow this is all Obama's fault?It amazes me that Bush walks away with no accountability for his actions and the best the republicans can do is blame Obama for everything So glad about the 2 term limit,i can only imagine what another term of Bush would have done to the country.

Thank you. +1, with a few zeros after it.

[MadMax]

Originally Posted by jambo101

I'd say the country did wake up,they threw the 8yr legacy of George Bush and the republicans under the bus.Listening to some republicans you'd think Americas problems all started when Obama was elected,sorry but 8yrs of Bush running the country like the old wild west led to 2 wars and a close call not going into 3 others (Iran,Syria,Afganistan),he let the money people run rampant with the financial institutions of America to the point the country came close to bankruptcy while the fat cats just stuffed their pockets with your money,and somehow this is all Obama's fault?It amazes me that Bush walks away with no accountability for his actions and the best the republicans can do is blame Obama for everything So glad about the 2 term limit,i can only imagine what another term of Bush would have done to the country.

Errrr, I know you aren't an American, so maybe you don't realize this but our president doesn't have absolute powers therefore much of the blame also lies with the Congress and Senate. And guess which political party help the majority in those two bodies during the last half of the Bush administration?

Also, if you did your research you will find our current housing problems were started by the previous administration (Clinton). I don't necessarily believe it was intentionally meant to collapse the market, in fact it was started with all the best intentions but unfortunately was left running unchecked therefore nosedived driving the country into its current economic woes.

Additionally, don't be so quick to praise Obama, he shouldn't be given a free ride simply because he followed Bush. Some of his proposals are not well thought out, and they need the checks-and-balances of a little criticism. Here is a good example from the Wall Street Journal...

The 2% Illusion
Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough.

President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime."

APThis is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need.

But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

Fast forward to this year (and 2010) when the Wall Street meltdown and recession are going to mean far few taxpayers earning more than $500,000. Profits are plunging, businesses are cutting or eliminating dividends, hedge funds are rolling up, and, most of all, capital nationwide is on strike. Raising taxes now will thus yield far less revenue than it would have in 2006.

Mr. Obama is of course counting on an economic recovery. And he's also assuming along with the new liberal economic consensus that taxes don't matter to growth or job creation. The truth, though, is that they do. Small- and medium-sized businesses are the nation's primary employers, and lower individual tax rates have induced thousands of them to shift from filing under the corporate tax system to the individual system, often as limited liability companies or Subchapter S corporations. The Tax Foundation calculates that merely restoring the higher, Clinton-era tax rates on the top two brackets would hit 45% to 55% of small-business income, depending on how inclusively "small business" is defined. These owners will find a way to declare less taxable income.

The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can't possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well.

On that point, by the way, it's unclear why Mr. Obama thinks his climate-change scheme won't hit all Americans with higher taxes. Selling the right to emit greenhouse gases amounts to a steep new tax on most types of energy and, therefore, on all Americans who use energy. There's a reason that Charlie Rangel's Ways and Means panel, which writes tax law, is holding hearings this week on cap-and-trade regulation.

Mr. Obama is very good at portraying his agenda as nothing more than center-left pragmatism. But pragmatists don't ignore the data. And the reality is that the only way to pay for Mr. Obama's ambitions is to reach ever deeper into the pockets of the American middle class.

He's a politician just like every other, and blind faith only leads to disaster...

Cheers! M2