US Election. - Page 1

I followed Palin 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.
 

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.
 

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?
 

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

Madness like this makes me run from this man.

Also, the housing collapse was initiated by Democrat policies and grew strength through people like Bill Clinton wherein the government bullied private banking to provide gov't backed loans to people outside responsible banking parameters. When people, like John McCain, spoke and said something needed done about this, the Dem's shut that down. Then the irony is that when it happens, the Dem's point to the Republicans and say "It's their fault. They were in the Presidency." Then the further irony is that Obama uses that false blame to try and base his run off of, and people believe it.

And just like you touched on above, many Dem's have commented to me things like "Well, the Rep's have the country so screwed up right now that even if he gets elected he probably won't be able to do much and that won't be his fault." It's like they cause the very problem, stand in the way of the solution, blame the wrong people, use that blame to gain support, and then admit before they even win that they can't fix it....but that's the Rep's fault, too! Amazing......

Finally someone with a brain who can look rationally at the picture - thanks Chisum for restoring my faith that there are some thinkers out there.

What I neglected to mention, in such clear terms, is this: Chisum wrote: "Noted inequality threatens democracy’s very foundations". Chisum is absolutely correct and some of you could stand to read some various major histories of the world to get a grasp of this concept. Inequality threatened and was a contributing factor to the fall of most of the worlds' major civilizations.

We see evidence over and over on this board of all of the above, with too many spewing hatred and blame of other ethnic groups for their failures in life. We see a lack of work ethic, but plenty of "me, me" and we certainly see a lack of ethical and civilized behavior, even in the sale and training of dogs.  We like to think it is only the big oil company execs and Enron types screaming "me, me" and taking what they can, but plenty here are also probably guilty too.

Some of you fail to grasp what Obama means when he talks about the redistribution of wealth. He does not, for example, mean the government should take more of the money you brought home and give it to the Tom down the street sleeping on cardboard. But he does mean that we spend, as a nation, our funds to help prevent that Tom down the street from falling into such situations where he is destitute and has nothing to fall back on, including help of any kind. He does mean that we spend money here rather than invade a country to bring "democracy" to it and protect our freedom (which is bunk). He does mean that we invest in programs that will prevent a 10 year old kid in our country from thinking that his only path in life is to stand on a street corner and pimp for some bigger, stronger guy, or sell/run drugs. We could go on and on about what this means, but those of you that want to call him names, think it funny that a photo of a trap with a watermelon in it is an appropriate way to speak about any one, especially one who is partly black, and those of you who want to continue to denigrate other ethnic groups will not understand this anyway. You are part of the problem and rather than your being "patriots" as you so often think of yourselves, you are misguided and will be part of the very poison that brings this society to a halt. 

Obama will be elected.  I hope that all of us who have hope in our heart and faith in this country and the majority of our citizenry will come together to energize our elected leaders so that together we may all find soluti

Continued from above:

Obama will be elected.  I hope that all of us who have hope in our heart and faith in this country and the majority of our citizenry will come together to energize our elected leaders so that together we may all find solutions to the serious problems facing not only our country, but this changing world we live in. Rather than talk about your guns and ammo, why don't you get busy and do something useful? (Sorry for the bold type above....I could not get the software to allow normal text).

All of our votes are counted Privately, Out of plain site. 

This will be another fixed election made to order. Youre also seeing it with the Acorn scandal.  You folks think you have a choice and are 'free'.  News for you...Youre not.

80% of the voting machines are imported from Israel-Diebold & ESS.   Russian Israel emigre, Bob Urosevich, together with his brother Todd, founded ES&S. Bob then went to run Diebold, while Todd still is a Vice President at ES&S. Diebold and ES&S, together, count about 80% of the votes in the United States.'

'He who Casts the vote, decides Nothing. He who Counts the vote, decides everything' 

-Joseph Stalin

Acorn doesn't have a patch on Diebold, and it's already happening.  You saw the stories out of W VA early voting, where pushing the Obama vote button automatically put a check-mark in the box for McCain.  When voters complained, they were told, "yeah, the machines have been doing that."

http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/30/florida-diebold-machines-help-you-pick-the-right-candidate/

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm

http://www.bartcop.com/diebold.htm

 > 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).<

Yes, how dare someone work his entire life, to build up an estate to leave to his heirs.  A good sized farm can be worth that much, by itself, as can a business.  How nice that that deceased person did not spend all his money during his lifetime, so the government can swoop in and rake in his life's work!  We need a Global Poverty Tax, you see.  Do your share, and don't complain.

I have a capital idea (pun intended)!  Let's tax WEALTH!  Let's really put the screws to these rich people.  Why should they be allowed to have all that money, when somebody else doesn't have as much.  They're no better than anyone else!  Who do they think they are, anyway?

How about it, people?  How about let's let the government cut right to the chase and put a progressive tax on your assets each year.  Won't that be nice?  Won't that be fair?  Hey, let's propose this to Barack.  He's bound to thank us for such a great suggestion.

Oh, and Hodie?  I realize the need for and support a safety net for the truly needy, but I resent the achievers in our society being on the hook to bail out someone that has made poor decisions throughout his life, beginning with not paying attention in school, to working in entry-level jobs his whole life, to taking the equity out of his house to go on shopping sprees.

There is opportunity in this country, if only an individual show the slightest bit of initiative.  Nowhere else is there so much help to attain an education, especially for bright, motivated minority students (a very, very good thing, as they are our future).