McCain and Palin open the door to their own terrorist sympathies

John McCain was partly responsible for the last national financial crisis.  I’ve already linked a photo of McCain with Keating, and now the Obama campaign has created a video to expose the economic “principles” of John Sidney McCain III.

The 400 wealthiest Americans have increased their net worth by $670 billion over the last 8 years, according to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. This is staggering. When you hear Sarah Palin’s new buzz phrase, redistribution of wealth, this is what they are trying to hide. The redistribution has already begun. It’s the few taking from the many. As they try to smear Obama as a socialist, they are selling fascism.

Publicly subsidized, privately profitable! -Propagandhi

• Our economy has lost jobs for 9 straight months.
• Last week, the Dow dropped 777 points in a single day. That is $1.2 trillion being pulled from the market at once.
• This week, nothing has changed in the markets.

Bill Ayers is an interesting name to be thrown around. I think it makes a great comparison to names like Thomas Muthee, or the Alaskan Independence Party. If there were an episode of VH1’s ‘Where Are They Now?’, then the entire argument of Bill Ayers is quickly engulfed in the wave of shock that comes from understanding where Muthee, the AIP and the Palin family stand now.

• Ayers, who committed his crimes in the 1960s is now a professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Senator Obama was 8 years old when Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, and Obama has denounced Ayers’ actions.
• Palin, on the other hand, has given a speech to the Alaskan Independence Party as recently as 2008 and her husband was a card-carrying member of the secessionist group. Their website boasts the motto: Alaska First – Alaska Always. AIP founder Joe Vogler says “I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I have no use for America or her damned institutions.” He’s also stated “the fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred of the US government. And I won’t be buried under their damn flag….when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.” That is the founder of the group Palin addressed this year.
• Pastor Muthee, who has blessed Sarah Palin’s campaign began as a witch hunter in Kenya. She’s also gushed about how he prayed for God to “make a way” for her campaign. He prayed for God to bring finances to the campaign, in front of a congregation. How does that qualify for a tax exemption?

While we’re discussing radicals, how about those who bomb abortion clinics? Clearly this is one terrorist group that has Senator McCain’s sympathies.

John McCain is as mentally fit as Grandpa Simpson and Sarah Palin is as intellectually curious as George W. Bush — at best. All of these ridiculous spurious links brought up by the Palin-McCain campaign are to distract us from some of the worst economy ever seen by “Joe Six-Pack” as Palin likes to describe us.

Are you better off today than you were 8 years ago?

“We don’t know much about this guy” is a lie about Obama

Tonight on MSNBC’s Verdict with Dan Abrams, Tony Blankley, a former speechwriter for the Reagan administration concluded the media is addressing the Reverend Wright circus properly.  He feels that because we’re on the cusp of potentially electing the first black president — and since we don’t know much about him — we must consider things like Reverend Wright before we cast a vote for Obama.  

Earlier in the show John Kerry is asked a question about Wright, his answer was clear and in direct opposition to the spin Blankley gives.  Kerry says “let this go” and that the media is focused on the past instead of the future of major issues concerning Americans.  As a concerned American, I agree.  It’s been frequently discussed in this blog as I feel the media is reporting it through such a narrow, pre-spun way it is necessary to at least make sure more of the information is out there.  

[On the same episode of Verdict, the ‘Why America Hates Washington’ segment was about the military contracts inadvertantly funding the recently-raided polygamist sect near El Dorado, TX.  Sexual abuse has now been revealed among boys as well as the still underage girls who are pregnant with their third or forth child.  I had reported on this earlier in April, and I probably found it on Digg.]

Tony Blankley, and many others in the media need to understand the “we don’t know much about this man” charade is all bullshit and many Americans have already called you on this. 

Personal Memoirs

Each candidate has written a book or two. Barack Obama has written two books about his life, his upbringing, his beliefs, race and ambitions.  John McCain has written six-plus books, primarily on his family memoirs of his Admiral father and grandfather. He’s also written about Middle East politics, Afghanistan, courage and air bag safety. Hillary Clinton has written memoirs and children’s books.

Landmark Legislation

Barack Obama is responsible for the same number of pieces of passed landmark legislation (2) in his two years as Senator Clinton during her four years in the Senate.  The only current bill any of the three remaining candidates were actually co-sponsoring was the earmark moratorium, which all three have co-sponsored.

Committee Work

Hillary Clinton serves on these committees:

• Armed Services
• Environment and Public Works
• Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
• Special Committee on Aging

Barack Obama also serves on four committees:

• Foreign Relations
• Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
• Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
• Veterans’ Affairs

Commander-in-Chief/Executive Experience

People claim Senator Obama isn’t experienced enough to be Commander-in Chief, where I’d say Sen. McCain’s record looks the most personal, but his experience wasn’t in leadership — like his father and grandfather, both admirals.  When compared to Senator Clinton, Obama has served on both the Foreign Relations and Homeland Security committees, while Hillary Clinton serves on the Armed Services committee.  

Committee work is not true executive experience, but it is a political arena in which speaking requires you have a good question for whomever is being deposed, a recommendation on a piece of legislation, or just a generally good idea.  As far as previous experience is concerned, none of the candidates have actually served as leadership executives.  If that were the primary factor in voter’s minds, we’d have polls indicating Mitt Romney is leading at this point.  We might have already elected Ret. General Wesley Clark in 2004.

Voting on Issues

Each candidate has voted on a spectrum of issues, and even Senator Obama has voted on all of the issues currently facing our nation having been in the Senate (even if only for two years).  Sen. McCain has weighed in on having a federal holiday in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.  He evidently got it wrong the first time, so he had to spend time apologizing this year on the campaign trail.  I’d really rather not use that as a reason to vote against McCain, but rather see why voting over a long period of time doesn’t mean much, other than the fact that one current issue has one candidate standing alone.

War in Iraq/Distraction from Afghanistan

Only Senator Barack Obama was against the war from the beginning.  We were lied to by the Bush administration and a news media eager to do the government’s dirty work disseminating propaganda.  There were no weapons of mass destruction.  There were not operating extremist cells in Iraq, because Saddam was never liked by radical and fundamental Islamists like bin Laden.  Iraq and Iran balanced each other and kept each other in check for years.

Interventionism vs. Non-interventionism

Anyone who felt what President Reagan did made you safer, or the policy of not invading Iraq of the first Bush administration actually was better international use of military force as a protective measure only should feel swindled by this war.  I know it’s too late to bring back those lost, it’s too late to undo everything we’ve done, but we have rid the world of one dictator, who had an established rule in a time where information traveled more slowly.  

Today we have faster flow of information, and a better network of international peacekeeping forces who could actually intervene if there were a legitimate threat coming from the region.  This is why the concept of a nation policing the globe should be obsolete.  This is why we must not stay.  Let them find their own Founding Fathers, let them express the Iraqi Dream.

Unwrapping Media Spin

When pundits say “we don’t know much about him” they are just lying and getting away with it.  Nobody points out that these people are living their lives every day in the public eye.  Everything they have done in the past is available through Google, and anything they’ve said has probably hit YouTube.  Each candidate has written books, given votes and taken stances.  The question is, which direction do you choose for the nation?

Do we go with the veteran ex-maverick who has turned to pandering to his base, or aligning with them on issues on which he has no familiarity?  He is either getting bad advise or losing his grip to some degree.  A lot of my final impression of John McCain’s candidacy rides on who he chooses for a running mate.  I’m not fond of the values of his wife — like stealing prescription medication from her non-profit charity — and the fact that they claim to be for the working man having never been in that position since the two have been married (she’s a Budweiser heiress).  I also recognize these are only fringe issues, and some shady people in personal life were extraordinarily great leaders in public life.  

I just know Sen. McCain will have to rely on people for anything economy related, which just so happens to be the most pressing issue to Americans today.  I we had instituted the draft (which we would probably have to do if we somehow picked a fight with Iran) then the war would actually be the most pressing issue to the most Americans.  Sen. McCain knows about the military, but he has also aligned to the actions of the Bush administration, which is reprehensible considering the quagmire we needlessly created.

Do we go with the more socially-rooted candidate in Hillary Clinton, whose prime causes include universal health care and the war, having voted to authorize the war in the first place.  On the issue of health care I think requires a private-public solution, removing employers from the decision-making process of which plan to buy.  If employers aren’t required to cover employees, they can pay them more, which allows employees to take the money previously paid for the same services out on to the open market.  Do this with 150 million workers at once and you will create something beautiful within the market — equilibrium.  Everyone shopping, looking for the best deal.  Multiple providers, looking to be the best business.  Let American ingenuity solve the problem if Congress can’t.

That inadequacy in Congress should end after a President who sends recommendations to Congress then vetos the bills they finally send him, saying they didn’t sent him something he could work with (after 535 people found a way to decide).  We should learn our lesson that the president shouldn’t be “the Decider” but “the Listener”.  Someone who speaks for the people.  If we were truffula trees, we’d want a Lorax. 

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Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem. -former President Ronald Reagan

Sources:  votesmart.org, congress.org

Technorati Tags: politics,, barack, obama,, hillary, clinton,, john, mccain,, election,, media, myth

It was Congress…

…just not the 110th United States Congress. When President Bush passes the buck on the housing crisis, he sends a solar wave of hypocrisy through the nation strong enough to power every home in America for the year. Maybe that’s a bit idealistic, but we truly have a revisionist in the White House. This current housing crisis couldn’t possibly have been created by bank deregulation and bankruptcy reform of the 109th Congress.

Banks knowing Americans couldn’t get out of trouble when they employed predatory lending practices didn’t spur a wave of high-risk, adjustable-rate mortgages. That couldn’t be how it happened. It must be, as President Bush said today, the fault of a slow-as-molasses Congress divided by the fringe elements of both sides. That makes perfect sense.

Scapegoating

The 110th Congress has failed America in many key ways. Inactivity in government can mean the difference of survival and “falling through the cracks”. It doesn’t come close to the devastation that counteractive policy and reform causes the American public. We work harder for less money, but the banks make far more. The average American swaps out name brands for generics as luxury jets, high-ticket jewelry and $10M apartments in Manhattan sell like hot-cakes.

Cronyism

When you sell office supplies and your boss is underqualified and only became manager because of personal connections, work can be a source of frustration. When your personal connections begin causing entire populations to be ignored in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane, it becomes a much larger issue. Mike Brown, Michael Chertoff, Alberto Gonzales are only a few of the more well-known examples of Bush administration cronies, but they provide enough of an example of how ill-served the American public can be when cronies are appointed. This angers me no matter who is doing it, but by far the most gross example of overstretched qualifications are those appointments by the current faux-Republican, neo-Conservative administration. With recent comments exposing his lack of respect for humanity, one could put Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in that grouping as well.

Economic factors are always difficult to directly correllate and I have a feeling I may have overstretched this link. The 109th did deregulate banks and make it much harder for hard working families to file for bankruptcy. In some way this surely has affected the housing crisis, in lender’s attitude and consumer’s vulnerability. I’m just not convinced it’s a direct cause -> effect relationship, so don’t get the impression I’m blaming the entire housing crisis on the 109th or one piece of legislation.