Sarah Palin on SNL tonight

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by Chisum on 28 October 2008 - 08:10

I followed this thread keenly. This election affects us all and judging from the number of hits other GSD owners share a similar interest. Initially I wasn’t averse to McCain but like others astounded when he declared Palin as running mate. Her attempt to settle a family score by way of Alaskan public office breaks all bounds. Manifestly unfit to hold high office otherwise as well, she only underscores the nature of McCain’s own erratic decision-making processes. Were he younger and healthier one might ignore her existence: as things stand, she’s the stuff of future nightmares! Why did she consent to take part at all? A ready means to further own political career I’d venture. The final debate clinched it for me. Obama, lucid, rationality personified, didn’t so much out-score McCain as wipe the floor - with latter out of his depth and on the defensive and altogether too tetchy, resorting to plumber Joe and other flimsy nonsense as main life-lines – as he has ever since. I question too whether McCain owns the physical/mental stamina to effectively see out a full four-year stint. By plumbing the depths of negative nastiness I shan’t be sorry to see him lose! Right on the heels of blundering Bush (see the idiot’s derailing, simplistic Republican free market mantra at international finance summit!), what led the Republicans to pick him to begin with! With Obama though, I wonder if we’re not pinning our hopes too high. He may appear to hold all the answers but the world is awash with good solutions, whereas garnering consensus or sufficient political will to effect implementation is rather a different tale. The forces opposing true change are not only immense, including vested, corporate, cultural and systemic, but with world economies in dire straits, a federal budget deficit ostensibly exceeding 500 billion, two ongoing wars, and with benchmark interest rate already at record lows, the scope for fiscal innovation, or pump-priming the economy for that matter, seem slim indeed. Speak of a poisoned chalice! I can’t thus foresee any kind of miraculous transformation any time soon! I also can’t but help think that his more generous political donations may well have sizeable strings attached. And as hodie said, robust political change really demands wholesale momentum from the bottom up. By the way Do Right, for free, and speaking as one who’s played the markets for decades (including most mal-conceived derivatives) and who cashed in well last year and without a care for what Omaha’s Oracle avows and with markets still in free-fall, it’s in my view far too early to start buying – a further eventual drop of between twenty to thirty percent remaining very much on the horizon. Besides, shuffling paper between investors doesn’t equate to patriotic wealth creation! Still, as Lord Rothchild said: ‘Buy when the streets run with blood’ – alas, timing is all though. Market volatility equals speculator profit. Off late, I’ve rigidly stuck to very short-term puts and calls over the general index (mostly both at once) and it’s paying off handsomely. I pursued similar after 9/11, though restricting myself then to the longer-term calls.

by Chisum on 28 October 2008 - 09:10

Abhay displayed data intended to correlate size of federal expenditures between the two main parties; figures of questionable significance methinks insofar one really needs to look to each period’s underlying dynamics, including externally imposed influences. Each new Administration obviously also inherits the ills of its predecessor. The happy Clinton years were largely underpinned by ever rising debt levels, the real cost of which only surfaced later when uncontrollable higher oil prices started to bite into consumer disposable income, and so forth. In fact, as I see it, the presently plummeting price of oil may well achieve more toward avoiding serious recession than all government actions combined. Excepting the so-called ‘check-the-box’ corporations, it’s true that company tax is simply treated as merely another expense and passed on to consumers. Yet, there’s tax and then there’s tax, with ours the most bewildering mish-mash ever conceived! Anyhow, he only fair tax is one based on ability to pay, but presently far too high a portion comprises regressive payroll, State and local taxes which hit the low and middle-income earner far harder than the rich. The latter meanwhile revel in a 35% marginal rate! Madness! Ah, you say, but the benefit then trickles down to the masses. Dream on people! Deceased estates worth up to 3.5 million will be tax-free next year! How did this happen to come about? The general public mostly loath death duties but it’s in fact one of the best taxes going (exempting any transfer of the family home to surviving spouse and similar of course). It’s difficult to establish accurate figures for total US military expenditures but its generally agreed that we’re currently, including Iraq etc, chalking up roughly a trillion dollars per annum, half the world’s total or so. (By comparison, the UN and its agencies manage to get by on barely two to three percent thereof.) Slice that lot in half and we might actually start doing some good. Moreover, relative to most other Western industrial nations the US suffers a stupendous inequality in income, wealth and opportunity. The oh-so unique American Dream is largely myth. A working-class youngster in Scandinavia or some other northern European country stands a far better change of receiving a decent education, and is granted superior opportunities for upward social advancement, than any in the US. (Surprisingly, the last UN survey trumpets Beijing as the world’s most egalitarian city!) Said countries also tend to live within their means, and do so without annually running up 700 odd billion of debt favoring China in order to pay for their standard of living or oil imports. I’m also sure that Founding Fathers’ Ideal embraced rather more than home ownership a constant buying of more ‘stuff’ as some divine right. Normally, once more immediate material needs are seen to, each of us ancestrally craves for some sort of spiritual dimension, completeness or meaning, an inner wisdom or fulfillment if you like; with ever more ‘things’ but a poor substitute. As hodie also noted, social divisiveness has never been greater, with rampant consumerism and individualism-at-all-cost eroding social cohesion, local community spirit, values and responsibilities, with many seeking compensation through religious extremes.

by Chisum on 28 October 2008 - 09:10

Much is made of Obama’s supposed notions on redistributing wealth, and of socialism versus capitalism. (Damn Joe the Republican plumber!) There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the rich getting richer, but presently the wealth and income concentrated in the hands of the top one percent – owning as they do over one-third of US wealth (top 10 own 80 percent) - is much like it was between the 1880’s and 1920’s. In other words, as in the time of the robber barons - and such mostly at the expense of a financially stagnating middle and working class. (I’m obviously also missing something here. Aren’t the Republicans themselves busy turning capitalism on its head, socializing private enterprise’s losses whilst preserving founders’ profits! Much the way the taxpayer finances the Iraqi war with corporate oil interests reaping the rewards?) Noted inequality threatens democracy’s very foundations, with corporate demands and the wishes of the rich, as expressed through an army of lobbyists, readily outweighing those of the bottom 70% of the voting population. A telephone call from some sugar baron in Florida or Southern oil magnate thus ends up carrying more clout than any electoral or social needs. (The basic wage, and its flow-on, has remained unchanged for decades!) Before-noted countries readily match competitive free market enterprise with social welfare programs, including public transport, education, pensions and health programs etc, way superior to ours. It thus becomes far more a question of finding the right balance between free enterprise and socialism than ignorantly touting one to the exclusion of the other. With bleak economic times ahead, is there any real choice but Obama? And should you work for a living, what kind of madness would see you vote for McCain?

by seriously on 28 October 2008 - 12:10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJzU056ccV4

by keepthefaith on 28 October 2008 - 14:10

If someone has a business that grosses 250,000, but only takes home 60,000, he will pay the higher tax rate. He's going to have to lay off workers, and this will cause hardship right down the line.

Mickey, where is your support for the above statement? It is the NET INCOME of a business that would be subject to taxes not the gross revenue or the gross income. It is how the present tax system works and I have not seen one iota of information to indicate otherwise except at right wing blogs.

To do so on anything other than NET profit would be ridiculous. A business can have $250K in sales and actually lose money on a net basis. So based on what you are saying above, that business would have to pay taxes.

Further, it is any income above $250K that would be subject to the higher marginal tax rate under Obama's plan - a marginal tax rate that would be the same as it was when Clinton left office. It was a period of exceptional prosperity and job creation.

This is a summary of Obama's tax plan in terms of some of the main features.

online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121867201724238901.html

by Blitzen on 28 October 2008 - 14:10

Since when is socialism a dirty word in this country. We already have social security, medicare and a sliding scale tax system that is based on net incomes.

If you all really want to know which candidate is offering what you yourself feel will be best for the country, then go to an independednt site like factcheck.org and get educated. Or you can just keep laughing at racist remarks and photos generated by the PDB Uncle Toms that depict Obama as a cartoon figure or ones generated by the lunatic fringe that depict McCain as a dottering old fool who can't make up his mind.

by Micky D on 28 October 2008 - 14:10

"Mickey, where is your support for the above statement?"

Actually, KTF, an Obama volunteer was asked "are you talking net, or gross", and she answered, "gross", when asked about the $250,000 threshold. I suppose I could go digging through You Tube, but that's going to take days.

So, let's say someone nets $250,000 from their business. They wouldn't possibly use that income for capital investment down the road, would they? And surely, they would never use that money for their retirement, or to educate their children, I'm sure.

I'm not so young that I don't remember Clinton and Gore, while campaigning, promising that their tax plan would only effect the rich. Well, all that flew out the window once they were safely in office. They began to slowly reveal that, whoops, they had been overconfident, and that some in the middle class would be called on to "invest in America". Two years later, after the Democrat controlled Congress pushed through a gigantic elevation in taxes, (remember the huge raise in the gas tax?) the American people cried, "enough!" and ushered in the 1st republican majority in Congress in 40 years.

Sadly, the republicans got complacent, and eventually forgot their small government roots. They have only themselves to blame for their ouster in 2006.

Micky

by keepthefaith on 28 October 2008 - 15:10

Mickey, you don't need to scan through youtube or elsewhere to find what an Obama volunteer may have misstated regarding Obama's tax plan. It is hardly relevant unless it is outlined in a concrete proposal by Obama. Frankly, commonsense would suggest that if what you said was accurate the Republicans would have cited it repeatedly.

As to the merits of whether one should tax higher income workers - whether it is $250K or any other number - and its impact on the economy, it is something that people can differ in good faith.

by Blitzen on 28 October 2008 - 15:10

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/right_change_is_wrong.html

by Micky D on 28 October 2008 - 16:10

>As to the merits of whether one should tax higher income workers - whether it is $250K or any other number - and its impact on the economy, it is something that people can differ in good faith.<

Absolutely.

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