WHERE DO MCCAIN AND OBAMA STAND ON THE ISSUES

[Tamikosmom]

ON THE ISSUES
Every Political on Every Issue

http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm

[LouiseVargas]

It doesn't matter much where they stand on issues. In January you will see Barack Obama take the oath of office.

[Tamikosmom]

It doesn't matter much where they stand on issues. In January you will see Barack Obama take the oath of office.

 

Louise ...  I disagree.

IMO it matters very much where the candidates running for the highest office in the land stand on the issues.  It matters if they  possess truthworthy characters ... no hidden agendas.  It matters what political ideology will be upheld in the future in one of the greatest democracies on the face of the Earth.

Louise, my dear, it matters for your children and ... your grandchildren and ... your great grandchildren ...

American need to research the candidates and ... then make an informed choice on election day ... an informed choice when casting their precious ballots for the candidate whose ideology most closely reflects the principals and values that they treasure.

Janet

[WhiskeyGirl]

I continue to wonder who their running mates will be.  Any announcements?

What do working class American's treasure?  What will be the deciding factor when they cast their votes?

This is the first time that so many I know seem hopeless. 

I know two that are at risk of losing their homes.  Can either candidate save them?    Probably not.

I know quite a few people who think the current lineup of politicians and economic environment are a signal of the end times.  They believe the end is near, and neither candidate will run for a second term if elected.

I know a diehard Democrat who for the first time in his life is voting Republican.  He and his wife own a trailer home.  They both work.  His concern is that the Communists will take what little he has managed to save and give it to people who do not work.  He won't need to continue saving for retirement, the Communists will take care of him.    Gone are the days he gave out books encouraging people to buy American.  His wife isn't worried about voting because it just doesn't matter - the end times are here.  Don't have to worry about their grandchildren growing up.   

I know some guilty liberals that think the country is real F***** up because they are on the waiting list for a Prius or Smart Car and have to continue driving their SUVs for maybe another year.  They are distressed because the apples they want from the market are now $13/bag, and they had to settle for apples that are $5/bag.

On the other hand, I know people who go to Aldi and pay the going rate for the one kind of apple they stock.  Shopping at Aldi is simple and efficient.  If Aldi doesn't stock it, they probably don't need it, or can't afford to drive to another store.  Simple logic, nothing to be distressed about.

Misery is all around.  I don't see anyone suggesting changes or drawing a map to put this country back on the road.

[LouiseVargas]

Dear Janet,

People are so sick of issues. They just want to see a new face.

[WhiskeyGirl]

Dear Janet,

People are so sick of issues. They just want to see a new face.

That is a very interesting point -  "a new face"

How long do new faces last on reality shows?

Will American's lose interest after a few weeks?

Is this the change to come?  A new face every four years?

Maybe the president will be elected every year?  The biggest reality show ever, until the public gets bored?

Maybe president for life?

[caesu]

thanks, seems a good site, non-partisan.

[WhiskeyGirl]

I agree ~

Perspectives Columns
Published: Monday, June 30, 2008

Make no mistake, our government is broken

Ann McFeatters, Scripps Howard columnist

Every day there is another example of how our government is broken.

The presidential candidates are so busy assuring us that they have good values, love their country and will give us cheaper energy that they have no time to talk about broken government.

With all 435 seats in the House and one-third of the Senate up for election, the candidates are scrambling for campaign dollars and votes and few have the inclination to talk about broken government.

And, as a nation, we have no money.

Nothing gets done any more because hyper-partisanship in Washington has gotten so awful that many good legislators are quitting. Politics is no longer fun. It's mean-spirited and demoralizing.

  Pork barrel politics...

The moribund mortgage market caused lawmakers to scramble to aid homeowners threatened with foreclosure, but after months of talk and votes in the Senate and House, the White House and Congress have not yet agreed on a package both will accept, although Congress seems likely to act on its own and override an expected presidential veto.

  I know two people in danger of losing their homes.

The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, but the U.S. military doesn't have enough soldiers to stop the violence. Violence in Iraq has abated since the surge, but in three days nine American soldiers died there. After more than five years, the U.S. death toll is over 4,000 and the casualty toll is thousands more. Congress doesn't know what to do.

  Leadership

About 20 percent of Americans say they are postponing or going without needed medical treatment, mostly because of the cost. Congress has no current plans to deal with the 47 million uninsured Americans or with high medical costs.

  Follow the money and find out why we pay like $20 for a bandage in the hospital, when they are maybe $2 for a whole box at Walmart.

Paul Light, an expert on good government, wrote in The Washington Post: "We've seen the federal government at its worst over the past six months. Consider the controversies over contaminated tomatoes and meat, tainted toys, toxic trailers, counterfeit Heparin, aircraft groundings, veterans' care, missing warheads and unrelenting contract fraud. For every NASA success on the surface of Mars, there seems to be a failure back on Earth." He notes the new president will have to appoint 3,000 political executives, who have to be approved by Congress, to oversee an increasingly frustrated federal workforce asked to do more with less.

Kennedy was a dreamer who saw the possibilities related to space travel...innovation & area 51.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has been breaking laws by hiring lawyers based on their political ideology instead of merit. There will be no punishment.

  This will probably continue and I have no idea what kind of ideology they speak of.

We should demand that Barack Obama and John McCain tell us how each would fix the broken federal machine they so desperately want to run.

I agree.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080630/OPINION04/781481169/-1/opinion

[WhiskeyGirl]

06/30/2008  PAUL KRUGMAN

The Obama Agenda

We could do a lot worse than a rerun of the Clinton years. But Barack Obama’s most fervent supporters expect much more.

Centrist or progressive? The real Barack Obama at the moment looks much more like a Bill Clintonesque centrist.

It’s feeling a lot like 1992 right now. It’s also feeling a lot like 1980. But which parallel is closer? Is Barack Obama going to be a Ronald Reagan of the left, a president who fundamentally changes the country’s direction? Or will he be just another Bill Clinton?

So the odds are that this will be a “change” election -- which means that it’s very much Mr. Obama’s election to lose. But if he wins, how much change will he actually deliver?

Like Mr. Clinton, Mr. Obama portrays himself as transcending traditional divides. Near the end of last week’s “unity” event with Hillary Clinton, he declared that “the choice in this election is not between left or right, it’s not between liberal or conservative, it’s between the past and the future.” Oh-kay.

Mr. Obama’s economic plan also looks remarkably like the Clinton 1992 plan: a mixture of higher taxes on the rich, tax breaks for the middle class and public investment (this time with a focus on alternative energy).

Sometimes the Clinton-Obama echoes are almost scary. During his speech accepting the nomination, Mr. Clinton led the audience in a chant of “We can do it!” Remind you of anything?

Mr. Obama looks even more centrist now than he did before wrapping up the nomination. Most notably, he has outraged many progressives by supporting a wiretapping bill that, among other things, grants immunity to telecom companies for any illegal acts they may have undertaken at the Bush administration’s behest.

The candidate’s defenders argue that he’s just being pragmatic -- that he needs to do whatever it takes to win, and win big, so that he has the power to effect major change. But critics argue that by engaging in the same “triangulation and poll-driven politics” he denounced during the primary, Mr. Obama actually hurts his election prospects, because voters prefer candidates who take firm stands.

In any case, what about after the election? The Reagan-Clinton comparison suggests that a candidate who runs on a clear agenda is more likely to achieve fundamental change than a candidate who runs on the promise of change but isn’t too clear about what that change would involve.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that Mr. Obama really is a centrist, after all.

One thing is clear: for Democrats, winning this election should be the easy part. Everything is going their way: sky-high gas prices, a weak economy and a deeply unpopular president. The real question is whether they will take advantage of this once-in-a-generation chance to change the country’s direction. And that’s mainly up to Mr. Obama.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,562888,00.html

What kind of change for the Obama government?

How will he address the rising cost of education?  Health care?  Taxes?

In order to pay back an astronomical student loan, I image a student will need to land a really good paying job, and one with a future. 

Will that good paying job land them in the upper tax brackets?

[WhiskeyGirl]

Where are political speeches documented? 

Most of what I find are editorials regarding the speeches, not the speech itself.

[caesu]

speeches Obama:

http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php

speeches McCain:

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/Speeches/

[WhiskeyGirl]

speeches Obama:

http://www.barackobama.com/speeches/index.php

speeches McCain:

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/Speeches/

Thanks!

[nonesuche]

Dear Janet,

People are so sick of issues. They just want to see a new face.

Louise-

As much as this will upset you it has to be said, since you have now made such a blatant post.

A new face, if only these very complex global problems were that easy to solve but they are not.

You so discourage me, I just cannot bear to read it certain days. Yet I have always carefully reinforced to my children their 'responsibility' in research to validate their vote having merit?

Nothing like cancelling out those who do take their vote seriously......

[Tamikosmom]

McCain Goes for Obama’s Jugular in Latest Ad
by FOXNews.com
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

John McCain’s campaign launched a new attack ad Wednesday against Barack Obama in an attempt to destroy the Democratic presidential candidate’s credibility during the same week he accepts his party’s nomination.

McCain’s ad, entitled “Tiny,” is designed to undermine the theme of Democratic convention’s third night, national security.

It highlights comments Obama made during the Democratic primary season when, defending his foreign policy, he called the comparative threat from Iran to the former Soviet Union “tiny,” and said the Islamic republic “doesn’t pose a serious threat.”

“Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries,” Obama said at the time. “I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, ‘We’re going to wipe you off the planet.”‘

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/08/27/mccain-goes-for-obamas-jugular-in-latest-ad/
.
.
Ahmadinejad Calls U.S. 'Satanic,' Israel 'About to Die'
Monday, June 02, 2008

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted that Muslims would uproot “satanic powers” and reaffirmed his prediction that the Jewish state will soon be wiped off the map, the Agence France-Presse news agency reported Monday.

"I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene," Ahmadinejad said.

"Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started," the hard-line president said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,361705,00.html

[WhiskeyGirl]

What I remember from all the speeches and such -

Barack Obama believes a wealthy person earns over $250,000.

John McCain believes a wealthy person earns over $5,000,000.


I believe the 'devil' is in the details.  "Lies, damn lies, and details."

Apples to Oranges Comparison

What are the details of the $250,000 and $5,000,000?  Is this gross income?  Net income?

I think about a self-employed person or small businessperson with a gross income of say $750,000.  The person would still have to pay for expenses (employees, overhead, other taxes, misc.) out of the $750,000.

Obama Plan
Would this person be considered rich?  $750,000 is above the $250,000 Obama number, so maybe they would be considered wealthy.  Subject to steeper taxes for the wealthy?  Higher/additional  healthcare taxes?  How would the jump to wealthy status eat into this person's net income?

McCain Plan
Would this person be considered rich?  $750,000 is below the $5,000,000 McCain number, so maybe they would be considered middle class.  Not subject to higher taxes for the wealthy?  Healthcare taxes? 

In many ways, I am left with the impression that those considered 'wealthy' under the Obama plan will be subject to harsher taxes, almost punative.  Where is the incentive for the average person to work harder?  Once someone get's close to that $250,000 they have to consider the 'jump' to 'wealthy' status.  For some, this might be a suicidal jump.  At the end of the year, how many will be saying "Just shoot me!"  In an unfortunate year, someone might have unexpected income and trigger the 'wealth' taxes.

Would this person do better under the Obama or McCain Plan?

I think there should be some kind of truth in advertising/comparison to help people make an apples to apples comparison.  Maybe a few standard cases, representative of real world people.

It would be helpful if a non-partisan group came up with an internet  simulation to show how each families circumstance would be impacted under Obama, McCain, the current system, or another alternative. 

With all the internet tests to help voters pick the candidate most aligned to their view, I think a tax scenario would be easy to construct.

The devil is in the details.

just my humble opinions.   





(I seem to remember back in my mind something from the 'olden days' before the many tax reforms.  Sometimes, a pay raise meant you moved into a much higher tax bracket.  That meant your net pay actually decreased.  I think with two income families, this might be even harder to predict.)

[nonesuche]

WhiskeyGirl-

You bring up all the nuances within calculating real net income that matter, the issue remains that the candidates have to choose a departure point and thus each have done so, Obama 250K and McCain 5M.

Actually McCain's is more realistic for that represents sustained wealth over time, Obama's represents more likely his own circumstance for his isn't she lovely wife Michelle earns 250K annually in her job yet they spent on an extravagant home if they live within their means? Apparently they do not, will they too need the government to rescue them one day? Perhaps so......

I have watched so much of the DNC to the degree that it's made me nearly physically ill to watch the gratuitous displays - Obama's wife's emotional speech based solely on my husband worked for the poor and I love him so you need to elect him - to Hillary having to forfeit a true role call just to salvage Obama's declining popularity - to Clinton having to use his charisma to salvage Obama's declining popularity - to Biden's use of the death of his first wife and child to garner support for his checkered record or worse - to overcome it for the moment.

I'll be watching the RNC too, I'll have criticisms of that as well I feel sure. Our country is is a real downward spiral now and I am now beginning to take more cues off our shores in who we need to elect, than within our own country.

If you are watching folks, this emerged today and you had best BEWARE for this is beyond frightening.......

Now Putin is BLAMING the US for their invasion of Georgia, mark my words, this is only the beginning. He is wetting his lips with this, he prays we'll elect Obama who will then allow Russia to have their way with us. However he can besmirch the republicans who he does have some minimal measure of fear regarding, he will.

I don't want to be the nuclear target of Russia anymore than I want to live under their rule, honestly McCain may now be our only hope against that.

How wonderful, our country has lost so much due to our own in-fighting partisans in DC, that they have sent us to hell in a handbasket.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/28/russia.georgia.cold.war/index.html

[nonesuche]

I am not a Glenn Beck fan typically, but this campaign is like watching a train wreck so I find myself flipping channels trying to find some semblance of accountability somewhere and somehow. What I will say for Beck is he does question appropriately and I he's quite Republican and staunch proponent for less government not more, but I don't think he's an 'oligarch' republican - new term which Jon Stewart has branded a billboard with in advance of the RNR next week.    ridiculous even for a laugh Jon...but to be fair his piece on his show about Obama and Michelle's youngest daughter was pretty spot-on. That child has never been told to hush a day in her life, it showed.

In any event, this is on CNN and it's a fair assessment for the most part, and does push back for some accountability here.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/27/beck.conventions/index.html

Commentary: Keeping my distance from the Democrats

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Here at the Glenn Beck program, the budget isn't exactly that impressive. We're not the federal government, with a limitless American Express card that we never have to pay off.

So, instead of traveling to Denver, Colorado, and reporting on the Democratic National Convention in a fancy suit like a real show, I get to watch the speeches at my house in my boxers. Sorry for that image. Here are my impressions of some of the noteworthy quotes from the convention so far, which I observed from a safe distance.

Nancy Pelosi: "I am very proud of the Democrats in Congress."

Never mind that no Congress in the past 20 years has passed fewer public laws than this one, according to the Wall Street Journal. How could they?

They are spending one quarter of their work week debating and passing symbolic measures such as creating National Watermelon Month. The Journal says no Congress in the past two decades has proposed more symbolic resolutions than this one -- 1,900, for those of you keeping score at home.

Pelosi went on to mention 10 specific accomplishments, which worked out to 0.9 accomplishments per percentage point of congressional approval rating. Ten accomplishments, 9% approval.

Nancy Pelosi: "On the most important policy decision of our time, the war in Iraq, Barack Obama is right and John McCain is wrong -- very, very wrong."

By her definition, do you know who else was very, very wrong? The Democratic vice presidential nominee, Sen. Joe Biden. And the last vice president they nominated, John Edwards. And the guy he ran with, John Kerry. And your headline speaker Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton, among many, many others

Michelle Obama: "That's why I left a job at a law firm for a career in public service, working to empower young people to volunteer in their communities."

Michelle Obama's chosen career path led her to make $275,000 per year at a private hospital. Is that really a "public service" job?
It seems to me that a Republican wouldn't be able to get away with such a generous assessment of their résumé. They would surely be harassed for making a six-figure salary inside the evil health care industry, while millions suffer without insurance.

But hey, there's nothing wrong with making money, at least to me. And remember, she didn't say she was volunteering. She said she was "working to empower young people to volunteer," which is totally different.

Michelle Obama: Barack Obama will achieve his goals "the same way he always has -- by bringing us together and reminding us how much we share and how alike we really are."

How will he do it? He'll talk everyone into it. Yes, that has worked with his nomination, but can he "remind" me into wanting the government to pay for universal everything?

I don't think so. I must not be hoping hard enough for change.

Michelle Obama: If her husband wins, her children can tell their kids someday that they "decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming."

Sometimes doubting is good. For example, it's good to doubt that other countries' failing policies, such as universal health care, will suddenly work here.

Hillary Clinton: "John McCain doesn't think that 47 million people without health insurance is a crisis."

She must have missed the update that this number dropped by over a million. While it's still too high, I doubt she would have missed the news if it had risen.

She also missed, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, that 37 percent of the uninsured live in households making more than $50,000 a year, most of which can afford health insurance.

Twenty percent aren't even citizens of this country. One in three are eligible for government insurance, but aren't enrolled. So, while our health care is far from perfect, it's much better than Hillary wants you to believe.

Hillary Clinton: "I will always remember the boy who told me his mom worked for the minimum wage and that her employer had cut her hours."

So, how will raising the minimum wage get that mom more hours? If the business owner found her employment too expensive at the lower wage, won't they be cutting her hours even more now?

By the way, since the minimum wage increase, teenage unemployment is at a 15-year high. I'm sure there's no relation whatsoever.

Joe Biden: "Even today, as oil companies post the biggest profits in history ... John wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks."

Here is the justification behind this talking point:

1.) John McCain wants to cut corporate income taxes for all companies.

2.) Oil companies are companies.

That's it.

Democrats believe that you think oil companies are mean, so they single them out, hoping you think McCain has cut a special deal just for them. He hasn't.

I guess it's really hard to drum up anger against your opponent when you say, "John McCain wants to cut taxes for companies that make delicious ice cream sundaes, feed the puppies of toddlers and fix veterans' wheelchairs," but that's just as truthful as what Biden said.

Tonight, it's Barack Obama, at a football stadium, in front of what Reuters says looks like a Greek temple. Next week, we'll get to watch the Republicans' attempt at choreographed pageantry.

Am I the only one who can't wait for November fifth?

[nonesuche]

I'll bore you with one more from Juan Willams, a black american and democrat but what he's speaking about in this op-ed piece today for the Wall Street Journal speaks the truth of this - far better than myself.

We shall see if Obama can finally deliver when surrounded by a massive greek stage tonight, obviously fitting of his royalty that his wife espouses he's so deserving of.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121988620172978319.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

OPINION 
 

Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Race and Other Issues
By JUAN WILLIAMS
August 28, 2008; Page A15

Denver

There is a powerful, often painful, thread of memory in the American mind with regard to race. It is a flowing narrative from the time of slavery to the Civil War and on to the nation's struggle for racial equality. That story includes Martin Luther King's life and death as a martyr. Today the story continues in a nation where one-third of the population is made up of racial minorities. There is also an unprecedented number of immigrants and record levels of prosperity among the black and Hispanic middle-class.

Now we have Barack Obama's astonishing political rise, advancing the story to the point where a majority white nation might possibly select him as its first president of color.

For Sen. Obama's supporters and much of the American media, the message of this neatly packaged story is that the Illinois senator is the man who fulfills King's dream. "Had it not been for that speech," Mr. Obama told the Rocky Mountain News last week, "I very likely wouldn't be standing in Invesco [field] to accept the nomination from my party." He told USA Today he plans to pay tribute to King tonight, and use the speech to express "pride in how much this country has transformed itself in my lifetime . . . I don't think we can shy away from the significance of that."

More than 90% of black Americans are now on board with that story line, and according to polls, more than a third of black voters say his race is either the most important factor or one key factor in explaining their support for Mr. Obama. His race is at least a key issue for about a quarter of white voters as well, and that percentage is going up. Many white voters -- especially young people -- appreciate Mr. Obama as the biracial candidate capable of moving America to a new day, and past its legacy of endless racial tensions.

Yet given this central racial dynamic, it is incredible that on any issue of racial consequence Mr. Obama has become a stealth candidate. It is arguably smart politics not to focus on potentially controversial racial issues when you are a black man running in an election with an electorate that is more than 75% white. But how is it possible that Mr. Obama, as he rises to claim the mantle of Dr. King before 75,000 people and a national TV audience of millions here tonight, remains a mystery on the most important civil rights issues of our day?
Mr. Obama is nowhere man when it comes time to speak out on reforming big city public schools, with their criminally high dropout rates for minority children. He apparently refuses to do it for fear that supporting vouchers or doing anything to strengthen charter schools will alienate vote-rich unions. His rare references to the critical argument over affirmative action -- an issue that is on several state ballots this fall -- give both opponents and supporters reason to think he might be on their side. He has had little if anything to say about the persistent 25% poverty rate in black America.

The only speech Mr. Obama has given on race came after his minister's racist rants became public. In that celebrated talk he defended Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while at the same time distancing himself from the rants. That quick escape did not work, because Rev. Wright continued to spew vitriol -- threatening the campaign with questions about whether Mr. Obama subscribed to the same angry, anti-American views. It was only rational for voters to ask how he could have kept silent in the face of the minister's sermons over 20 years.

Time and again, the man who draws so openly on King's legacy refuses to sacrifice an iota of possible political support by taking a principled stand on matters of racial justice that King said are matters of right and wrong. Instead, Obama makes cryptic or general comments that leave his position on important racial issues ambiguous or unknown.

All of this can be written off as a politician in search of votes moving to the ideological middle, to accommodate public opinion as he focuses on winning. It might be said he is not a captive of any set ideology. John McCain has had his own flaws and changes of heart on a few issues in this election season.

But this is not a game in which all the players and issues are the same and everyone has dirty hands. Racial justice is beyond bargaining. And a special responsibility falls on Mr. Obama, because he has come to represent not just another presidential candidate, but a reflection of the nation's desire to heal its racial wounds.

The uneasy truth may be that Mr. Obama is not worried about alienating white voters with his stands on race. It is more likely that he fears having to speak the truth about the poor -- who are disproportionately black and Latino -- needing to take more responsibility for family breakdown, bad schools, thug-life culture and high poverty rates.

A 2007 Pew poll found that nearly 40% of blacks said the poor have become so divorced from middle-class values that they are a separate race. Mr. Obama has to know this tension exists. When he spoke in a black church about the need for black men to be good fathers it may have angered the Jesse Jacksons of the world. But it was a rare moment when he was willing to reveal himself and speak on an important racial issue. It did him no political harm; it may have helped him.

In the bad old days of legal segregation many white politicians would not take a stand, either. Men like Orval Faubus and Strom Thurmond used to make a political show of opposing what they called "race mixing" and equal rights for all. Later in life they said they had not been racists, but didn't want to risk losing elections to segregationist candidates who made outright racial appeals. Faubus and Thurmond did win elections. But sadly for them, there is no bargaining with history about accommodating injustice and particularly racism.

Whatever good they did in their political careers is a footnote compared to the corruption they advanced with their public accommodation of racism. Their failure to stand on principle prolonged segregation, damaging people and the nation.

If Mr. Obama is really to remind the nation of Martin Luther King, he might follow King's example of taking a moral stand. King did not vacillate on his call for civil rights laws, voting rights laws or fair housing laws. He took a stand even with his own supporters. In his historic speech on Aug. 28, 1963, King declared "there is something that I must say to my people," and then spoke against bitterness, hatred and violence even in the name of "gaining our rightful place" and freedom.

Now it is Mr. Obama's turn to speak as a moral conscience on race -- if only because it is the only truly effective way he can put the race issue behind him. Then he can begin filling in the specifics of his plans for the economy, dealing with terrorists and the war in Iraq. That will give voters a chance to realize the nation's dream of judging people on the content of their character and leadership, not their race.

Mr. Williams, a political analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News, is author of several books, including "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965" (Penguin, 1988).

**************************************

BRING IT MR BARACK, even the most talented and brilliant within your chosen race such as Juan Williams who is widely respected by those in BOTH parties are calling you out to do so.

Tonight I think we learn who the real Obama is, either the egotist hoping to ride smoke and mirrors into the white house on the race card, or a genuine candidate who is not obsessed with his own reflection but rather upon serving our country.

We shall see...

[WhiskeyGirl]

Thomas Sowell, a recent column on politics -

Random Thoughts

By Thomas Sowell

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

• If you took all the fraud out of politics, there might not be a lot left.

• The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer— and they don't want explanations that do not give them that.

(snip)

• Although you can block unwanted phone calls from commercial sources, you cannot block automated phone calls from politicians, which will be inundating us this election year. Apparently the courts think that the right of "free speech" includes the right to impose that speech on an unwilling audience. Maybe we need a new Constitutional Amendment, guaranteeing "freedom from speech."

One of the problems with successfully dealing with threats is that people start believing that there is no threat. That is where we are, seven years after 9/11, so that reminding people of terrorist dangers can be dismissed as "the politics of fear" by Barack Obama, who has a rhetorical answer for everything.

• There are countries in Europe that would love to have their unemployment rate fall to the 5.7 percent unemployment rate to which ours has risen. Yet those who seem to want us to imitate European economic and social policies never seem to want to consider the actual consequences of those policies.

(snip)

• When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is "control." That is what the political left is all about, as you can see by the incessant creation of new restrictions in places where they are strongly entrenched in power, such as San Francisco or New York.

• Now that the Senator with the furthest left voting record in the Senate and the Senator with the third furthest left voting are the Democrats' nominees for President and Vice President, there will be great expressions of indignation over being "negative" if anyone dares call them "liberals." Actually, leftists would be more accurate.

(snip)

• The recent death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn should make us recall what he said when he was awarded the Nobel Prize: "The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles." What would a Barack Obama presidency mean, other than more concessions and broader smiles, while Iran goes nuclear?

• Right after liberal Democrats, the most dangerous politicians are country club Republicans.

• Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that what he admired about FDR was his willingness to experiment in order to help the economy. That experimentation helped prolong the Great Depression, since people tend to hang onto their money when the government creates uncertainty by constantly changing the rules.

• At one time, it was said "The truth will make you free." Today, there seem to be those who think that rhetoric and hype will make you free. It might even be called the audacity of hype.

read the whole column here -

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell082608.php3

[nonesuche]

Great piece WhiskeyGirl - I agree with him about the audacity of hype.

Juan Williams was interviewed post Obama's speech and he said although Obama gave us just a bit more meat, he avoided once again providing details. He said the speech was a beginning toward what is needed, but that it's not going to get him elected, too many questions remain.

I listened to a libertarian speak last night and he said something I've not heard before, that essentially we aren't seeing more debates because the networks (MSM) are lording over that???? What the........ ??????????????????????

It seems he feels we need to bang on the door of MSM en masse and "demand" that we have open debates that are not censured or controlled (question selection by only media writers). Well I'm going to do my part on that one, MSM will be hearing from me.

I invite others to join me.

I did watch the speech, I TiVo'd it so I could review closely and my grade is a C.

Michelle wants this too much, it's a bit horrifying watching her emotional reactions to him during speeches. Something isn't right with that woman and lord knows she and the girls dressing all in the same color night after night ?????? Ugh, so much for individualism !!