Democrats

1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

the debate

The McCain campaign has to be pleased with the way Sarah Palin performed in the debate Thursday night. She went toe-to-toe with a Senate lifer. She was able to recover from those unflattering interviews, and she was also able to get a couple good shots in at Joe Biden in the process. She did benefit from low expectations, and I take that into account when evaluating the results, but she easily cleared that bar. Those who loved Sarah before the debate were validated, and those who thought she wasn’t the best choice for a VP have some ammo to make that case after watching the debate.

Sarah was great in that she spoke directly to the American people. She can connect with her audience in a way that Obama cannot. On style, Sarah easily wins this debate. But when Americans evaluate the two candidates as potential vice presidents, Biden makes the sale. Senator Biden is wrong on a great many things, but as a skilled debater, he was able to fool people into believing that he understands foreign policy and the Constitutional role of the Vice President. He gave specific policy positions on issues, and the average viewer won’t bother to check to see whether he accurately represents McCain’s positions or his (Biden’s) own. Governor Palin’s lack of specifics on policy issues hurt her case, but as she said, she has only been prepping on this for 5 weeks, so no one should have expected that she could cram 20-30 years of knowledge into her head in that short time.

Governor Palin did not change any minds by her performance Thursday night. Those who came in voting McCain will still vote for him, and those supporting Obama will still vote for Obama. There is more work to do for McCain. This election isn’t lost yet, and McCain must have a better response to the country’s economic concerns and must learn how to sell his healthcare plan. The economy is the key issue, and there must be separation from the Bush administration if McCain really wants to win this election. Sometimes we just don’t get that impression.

Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

kill the pig, rescue the taxpayer

Those who are still pushing this absolutely-must-have-right-now-or-the-world-will-explode “emergency rescue plan” aren’t all that concerned with sticking to the $700 billion price tag.  Is it too much to ask from this Congress that we have a straight up-and-down vote on whether we should bail out private industry?  Why yes it is.   They just couldn’t resist adding pork to a bill that they believe will eventually pass.

Here are some of the “incentives“:

  • Sec. 105. Energy credit for geothermal heat pump systems.
  • Sec. 111. Expansion and modification of advanced coal project investment credit.
  • Sec. 113. Temporary increase in coal excise tax; funding of Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.
  • Sec. 115. Tax credit for carbon dioxide sequestration.
  • Sec. 205. Credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles.
  • Sec. 405. Increase and extension of Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund tax.
  • Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.
  • Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.
  • Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.
  • Sec. 503 Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.

Wooden arrows?  Cost recovery for a motorsports racing track facility?  All hail to our bipartisan overlords.  We might very well get stuck with the bill for all this, and this is a very high price to pay for opening the eyes of many Americans to the failure of both parties to get our fiscal house in order.

1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

debating biden and palin

Apparently Gwen Ifill’s writing a very complimentary book about our Democratic nominee for President, Barack Obama.  No bias here. Move along citizen.  Why in the world didn’t the McCain campaign know about this?  Are they all fast asleep over there?  With all the credit we can give that campaign for some of those clever web ads, the McCain team hasn’t been earning their paychecks in the last 2 weeks.  There are many things we can point to as far as mistakes they have made so far — the rollout of Sarah Palin, the fumbling around on the economy, the failure (until recently) to attack Barack on the issues that matter in this election — to name a few.  But even if they failed to “vet” Ifill and whether she could possibly be objective moderating this debate,  McCain is handling this correctly.

Making a big deal about this only hurts McCain.  They can’t pull Sarah from this debate, no matter what legitimate concerns they may have (internally) about this.  There are no unbiased moderators left in this country, so that’s not an reasonable option.  Sarah Palin needs to show up, tweak the media and the Democrats,  promote her candidate, and survive the gentle pokes by Joe Biden.  She can do this.  If it goes badly for her, the campaign will continue to push the extensive media bias theme, and it only advances their point on that.  Of course, if Palin does not do well here, McCain has bigger problems than a biased media.

Posted on Democrats, George W. Bush, Republicans

more on the “rescue plan”

One day after the House Republicans, with the help of a significant number of Democrats, stopped this disaster of a federal bailout, the world hasn’t collapsed.  The Dow rebounded a little today after its terrible day yesterday.  I still think those who voted against this bill did the right thing.  I am, however, unsympathetic to the Republicans complaining about Pelosi’s partisan speech, and making that a reason to oppose the bailout.  The bailout should be opposed on its lack of merit, and its expansion of government welfare to those who acted irresponsibly.  Republicans haven’t been making this case, and that’s why Democrats could still win the PR war.

Some of my fellow conservatives are trying to tell us the sky is falling and that we must pass Bush’s plan NOW.  Not so fast.  A federal takeover of this kind must be carefully studied and discussed, and alternatives must be presented.  Any acceptable plan must attempt to correct past errors as well as to hold those responsible for this mess accountable for their actions.  We aren’t there yet.

To the Democrats still willing to support their Speaker, I would ask them: Doesn’t it concern you that the Bush administration wants to expand the reach of the federal government to take over a large section of our economy?  I thought you all were against more power for the federal government under George Bush.  Why all of a sudden do you believe the Bush administration and Secretary Paulson when they insist that the only way to save the economy is through a federal takeover?  If this bill passes in its current form, then Democrats will share the blame with our President when it fails to achieve its objectives.  Hope you all are ok with that.  Looks like a no-win to me.

There are a few economists who are opposed to this bailout, and I would take their opinions over those of some of the know-nothings in Congress.

Here’s part of what one of them, Jeffrey Miron (day job- Harvard), had to say:

So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.

Read the whole thing.

Posted on Conservatives, Democrats, George W. Bush, Republicans

more reservations

There’s now a possibility that our Congress may pass a slightly modified version of Bush’s socialist bailout.  I guess we should be grateful that the House Republicans were allowed some input in the current draft, because it could be much worse than it is.  However, it’s not clear that the House Republicans got enough of what they wanted in this bill.  Mike Pence is still opposed to it, which prompts serious doubt in my mind that this is the best compromise we can come up with to “save” the economy.  Minority Leader Boehner calls this plan a “crap sandwich” but still plans to vote for it.  What awesome leadership by our minority leader.   Really inspires confidence in the folks we put in charge of the Washington Republicans.

Freedom Works has also weighed in with their opposition to the current bailout legislation (h/t: Michelle Malkin).  Here’s what they had to say:

Ten Reasons to Oppose the Wall Street Bailout

1. NO REFORM: The plan attempts to mask, rather than reform, imbalances in credit markets and in U.S. economic public policy. The plan props up reckless and failed banks by buying “troubled assets” instead of focusing on real reforms that go after government sponsored culprits Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and sustainable policies that will increase the availability of private capital and expanded economic growth.

2. TREASURY POWER GRAB: The plan raises Constitutional concerns by dramatically expanding the power of the current and future Treasury Secretaries, giving the government agency power to directly purchase assets from for-profit financial and non-financial firms.

3. STUNNING PRICE TAG: The $700 billion bailout figure is as much money as the combined annual budgets of the Departments of Defense, Education and Health and Human Services. It amounts to $2,300 for every man, woman, and child in America.

4. INCREASES NATIONAL DEBT: Instead of cutting spending elsewhere, Congress will borrow all $700 billion on global capital markets, and the bill raises the national debt ceiling to a staggering $11.3 trillion.

5. GLOBAL BAILOUT: The plan includes taxpayer purchases of distressed assets from foreign banks.

6. HURTS RESPONSIBLE AMERICAN BANKS: The plan punishes responsible U.S. banks by keeping reckless, insolvent investment banks in business. As BB&T CEO John Allison wrote in a letter to Congress on Sept. 23rd, “….this is primarily a bailout of poorly run financial institutions…. Corrections are not all bad. The market correction process eliminates irrational competitors.”

7. FLAWED PROCESS: Members of Congress and the public will have less than 24 hours and no hearings to discuss and understand the impact of this sweeping plan. This rush to pass a wildly unpopular plan without benefit of significant public debate and input will also undermine its legitimacy and effectiveness.

8. BY WALL STREET, FOR WALL STREET: Treasury Secretary Paulson, the architect of the plan, was formerly the head of Goldman Sachs, one of the firms responsible for the mess and a direct beneficiary of the bailout. Further, the advisers managing the bailout auctions and assets will be Wall Street firms and will likely receive billions of tax dollars in fees.

9. OTHER OPTIONS NOT EXHAUSTED: The idea that taxpayers will make money on the bailout is not credible. There are ready buyers for these “troubled assets” — Merrill Lynch sold its entire portfolio of mortgage backed securities in July– provided the price is low enough. If a profit was possible, private speculators would readily buy these troubled assets.

10. MORALLY OFFENSIVE: The plan violates basic principles of American capitalism and honest governance by creating a system of “private profits, socialized losses” that transfers money from taxpayers directly to Wall Street investment banks. Free market capitalism only functions if individuals and firms are held accountable and are allowed to both succeed and profit, and also to sustain losses and even fail.

I echo these sentiments.  This current bailout bill (pdf here) isn’t good enough.  Go back to the drawing board and fix some of these flaws before the vote if we absolutely must have a government intervention of this type.  I’m not convinced that we need something this massive.  We can do better than this, and we must.   Like the Freedom Works quote says, “Free market capitalism only functions if individuals and firms are held accountable and are allowed to both succeed and profit, and also to sustain losses and fail.”   The solutions we are seeing from this Congress don’t solve the problem and could add trillions to the national debt.  There’s nothing fiscally conservative about that.

If we don’t come up with a more responsible solution to our economic problems, then President Bush becomes the new FDR.  Well-intentioned socialism is still socialism.  In the beginning, our president seemed to be supportive of free markets and capitalism, as well as those popular tax cuts, but we didn’t elect him because we thought he had a strong fiscally conservative record.  It was because of national security and judges.  That doesn’t keep me from being disappointed that he feels he needs to support something like this.  While I realize that many of the root causes of this current crisis lie with our friends on the other side of the aisle, a large chunk of the blame for the current mismanagement of it should be with Paulson and the Bush administration.

I’m not sure if there is anything we can do to stop the worst from happening if Minority Leader Boehner has already caved and is trying to convince others to go along with the Democrats on this bailout plan.  I just hope that when this process is over, there will have been enough Republicans with the guts to say —  if this is what we must do,  let’s get this right before voting on it.

2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

draw

That’s what I thought about the McCain-Obama debate. McCain had a few good lines, but Obama did not do any obvious damage to himself when discussing foreign policy — at least not that any casual observer would notice. I don’t think either of them changed any minds tonight. I missed the part where they discussed the economy, but it probably wouldn’t have changed my opinion of this debate. McCain needed to knock out Obama, and he did not. This raises the stakes for the next two debates for John McCain, and this is a debate I believe McCain should have won because it’s an area of strength for him.

Minor point — there’s not much difference between preconditions and preparations, and Barack Obama’s explanation of this is just silly. But Barack did what he needed to do in this debate. Even though I absolutely disagree with about 95% of what Barack wants to do on foreign policy and the economy, I realize that the average American does not follow politics as closely as the bloggers and other assorted political junkies. So it’s possible that someone more detached from this than I am could see a clear winner between McCain and Obama. I didn’t.

Not surprisingly for those on the opposite side of the political debate — McCain is winning the FNC text poll 82 to 16. It was a lot closer than that.

8 Comments Posted on Democrats, Liberals

re: remove all doubt

Interesting that my buddy Chris is willing to link to Fox News, since it’s such an unreliable source. 😉 I’m not sure why he wants to classify Fox News as part of the MSM, except that a lot more people watch FNC for their news than MSLSD or CNN.  But ok…Fox News is now part of the hypocritical double standard where the MSM doesn’t call Iraq and Afghanistan socialistic enterprises, but it criticizes Obama for wanting to spend US taxpayer dollars on solving global poverty.  One of these should be under the umbrella of necessary foreign policy, and one of them should not be.  We disagree on whether the US role in rebuilding Iraq is a good investment in a positive outcome for Iraq or whether it’s just government wasting our money on useless nation-building — and thus no more useful than Obama’s efforts to finance the end of world poverty.

I’m not missing any such point.  If the MSM sees a difference between our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and what Obama is proposing with the Global Poverty Act,  it’s probably because there is one.  If your intention is to shoot a specific messenger, you might want to get a more accurate gun.  If Barack is being misrepresented, that’s not my fault.  That’s not the fault of the MSM or Fox News.  That’s his campaign’s fault.  But I’m getting off of the subject here…

I called the bailouts socialism, while acknowledging my lack of expertise on the subject of the financial markets.  You can choose to see this as a cop-out, or as an excuse for me not to be too hard on President Bush.  That’s your opinion, and you are welcome to it.  You can spin all you want to, but even you do not know what Barack Obama will do once he’s President.  He could decide to keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Thus the war funding would continue.  

But let’s say you’re right — that we suddenly have all the Iraq and Afghanistan money to play with.

Continue reading →

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

re: forest for the trees

There is a difference between calling the bailouts a mistake and calling them one example of socialism.  I did both.  I started out by saying that I disagreed with all the bailouts, and also that I was opposed to government taking over private industry.  Not sure how I could be any more clear than I was with that.   I wasn’t excusing the Bush administration by saying that I didn’t completely understand why certain private industries got government assistance and others did not.   The bailouts are still what I said they were.   I’m just saying that it’s above my pay grade to figure out what the fallout would be from letting these businesses fail.  We have already discussed the failure of the Bush administration to limit government, and I think you know that we are in agreement that he has expanded government during his 8 years.

What are the objectives of foreign aid?  Is it to promote goodwill or to give a financial incentive to other nations to side with us in disputes at the UN?  If so, how’s that working for us?  The nations who hate us will still hate us even when we have done all we can to win their favor.  Private charities have always been able to provide financial assistance to countries who have suffered natural disasters like earthquakes and floods, and they are usually more effective in the distribution of aid  than the US government is. Maybe a freeze isn’t the way to attack this, but Obama’s going to need all the domestic funds he can get to finance all the spending he’s proposing.

Iraq and Afghanistan are necessary expenditures, and ending world poverty shouldn’t be quite as high on our priority list.   A destabilized Iraq would be a national security risk.   Leaving now could mean that at some point, we would have to go back in and fix the chaos.  We have a national security interest in Afghanistan.  Even some of your Democratic friends agree on that point.  Doesn’t Barack want to send more troops there?  So he doesn’t seem to have a problem spending money on that project.  He also appears to have some interest in delaying the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, if that New York Post story is accurate.  

Let’s review– Barack wants to spend money on some domestic programs, ending world poverty, AND continuing to leave troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Explain why his plans are so different from those of the Bush administration.  (Well…other than the raising taxes on “rich” people part of Barack’s agenda.)

We wouldn’t have to raise taxes if the federal government would use the money it has more effectively, but since this hasn’t happened during the Bush administration, it’s even less likely under an Obama administration.  We have forgotten the part of fiscal responsibility that includes cutting programs that don’t work and allocating resources where they are most needed.  If Obama or McCain have something like this in their economic plan, I haven’t seen it.  Raising taxes on anybody is not a desirable option, especially because it enables wasteful spending, and raising taxes on corporations affects everybody, not just the fat cat CEOs.

Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals

conservatives and the mccain/palin ticket

There are two main issues that Christian conservatives consider important enough to threaten withholding votes from any politician who doesn’t perfectly toe the line — abortion and same-sex marriage.   When evangelicals and others hold the line on principle and refuse to endorse a candidate who doesn’t agree with them on these issues, they are called single-issue voters and derided for standing on those principles.  These issues are important to me as well, but sometimes we don’t think about the consequences of withholding support from perfectly good and qualified candidates who might be a better bet to win an election. Every one of our divided conservative groups picked a different horse, and McCain got his independents and moderates — at least in the primary. That’s how we ended up with a candidate in McCain that we are still unhappy with, despite the Palin bounce.

I agree with those who say that we should stop trying to make the experience argument for Sarah Palin, even though it doesn’t seem to bother the Obama sheep that their man hasn’t closed the deal with the American people in that category.   Her appeal is a broad appeal that has very little to do with her knowledge of foreign policy or her deep conversations with world leaders.   It’s all about her personal story — moose hunting, fishing, the NRA membership, her Down’s Syndrome son.  She’s a very sympathetic figure, and she is a happy warrior, zinging Obama and the Democrats with a smile on her face. (She does need some more variations in her scripted lines, but other than that, I have no complaints.)

While she has requested and received some earmarks, it is evident that she has made some significant changes in the way Alaska does business.  She deserves credit for that.  With an sky-high approval rating in Alaska, she must have done something right in her short tenure there.  I still think that Palin can learn what she does not know,  but unless the Democrats know something we don’t know about McCain’s mortality– McCain will be President on day one, not his VP.  Why are the Democrats even worried about Palin’s readiness anyway?  All they have to do is make sure Barack overcomes his struggles and wins the election. Not that difficult, right? 🙂

Then the 80% wrong Joe Biden can run his foreign policy.  Yikes.  This can’t be what the Democrats really want.

4 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

some advice for the mccain campaign

Stop treating Sarah as a victim. Stop being so politically correct. Let this “pig” remark die a natural death. Guess it’s too late for that now.

Take every opportunity to compare Governor Palin’s fiscal record with that of Senator Biden. She has the advantage there. There may be some doubt as far as when she started to oppose the bridge to nowhere, but she did oppose it. Both Barack and Joe supported it from the beginning.

More later….