Barack Obama

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

i’m amused by this

Yes…I’m aware that GOP.com could very possibly be a biased source, but that still doesn’t keep me from being amused by Barack Obama’s Spend-o-Meter. The graphic’s a little difficult to read here, so click the previous link to see the original.  That’s $874.35 Billion (as in BILLION) of our money.  I don’t think repealing tax cuts and closing corporate tax loopholes will be enough revenue to cover the checks we will be writing to fund all these proposals.
BarackObameter.jpg

Isn’t it always the Dems who say that Republicans must tell us how they are going to pay for any proposed new spending? Somehow they never seem to apply the same high standards to their own candidates than they do to candidates on the Republican side. Funny how that works. The GOP’s helpful list also illustrates that Barack is not much different from any Washington insider by the way he writes checks with OUR checkbooks. This is something all Washington politicians do, although John McCain is not quite as proficient as it as his Dem opponents. We can’t trust John McCain on many issues, but holding the line on spending has never been a problem for him.

I am also amused that the stock answer to the question of how all this new spending will be paid for is always to repeal the Bush tax cuts, and to punish corporations for making more money than the Dems think they should. There are quite a few dumb people out there who smile and nod, and say that this makes total sense. Increasing federal spending to the levels Barack and Hillary want would be incredibly reckless, because the government spends too much of our money already — and we still haven’t made a serious commitment to reforming entitlements. If no politician can make a genuine commitment to reducing the massive bureaucracy we have now, the least we could do is try to improve the programs we have without adding new ones. This is common sense. Unfortunately, that’s not the way Washington operates. I’m not sure that any presidential candidate has the ability to fix the status quo.

It would be nice to have a president who can do all the things Barack Obama is promising — and it’s easy to get sucked into the hopeful changemonger rhetoric and his promises of unity for the country — but is it too much to ask that a future president do more than give great speeches and to help Congress spend our money? The saving grace in all of Obama’s new spending proposals is that there is no way he will get all of that spending through Congress.

Promising everything to everyone. The Dems have done this for years. Barack Obama is no different from the rest of the party when it comes to extending the reach of the federal government through spending. Those who expect Barack to make a clean break from the Democrat party line will be sorely disappointed with President Obama.

2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Tony Blair, UK

barack’s third way

Even as a Republican, I like Obama. I think he’s a nice guy. He provides a sharp contrast to his opponent Hillary Clinton and to the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, both Washington insiders. Barack Obama is indeed a fresh face with a message of hope, optimism, unity, and not much else. What is different about Barack Obama is that he has mixed the attacks on President Bush with the soaring rhetoric and optimism of the Huckster. There’s more than one spoonful of sugar in what Barack’s dishin’ out. In fact, I’m not sure that everything his supporters are taking right now is a legal substance. I joke about this, but how else can you explain the brainless fanaticism by some of his followers(who are enjoying the music while ignoring the lyrics)? May I remind the groupies out front with their raised lighters and massive cardboard signs that we are not electing a rock star? Doesn’t the substance matter with Democratic candidates?

All the comparisons fall short of the mark. Barack Obama is no JFK. He doesn’t have JFK’s political or military experience, and no one has ever accused him of fiscal conservatism (even though he should be given some credit for the attempts at earmark reform). He’s certainly not Ronald Reagan. Obama has too much faith in the usefulness of government to solve the country’s problems. He’s also no Bill Clinton. He has the charisma, but none of the weaknesses of the 42nd president, and that’s a strong point in his favor as far as being the right guy for the Dems this year.

There is one comparison that would be somewhat accurate. It involves another man who was selected to sell the old, failed policies of his party by watering down its hard left origins. That man was former British PM Tony Blair. He too was a talented speaker and salesman. The problem was that Labour had always been a hard-left party, and the reason that Labour had spent so many years in the political wilderness was because people didn’t buy into their socialist policies once they became part of the working class. (They also had various non-photogenic types trying to sell Old Labour, and somehow this brilliant strategy failed…) Then Tony Blair came along, and the party recognized his talent and rhetorical skills, and elevated him to be the face of the party. This was a brilliant move on their part, and with a few tweaks in the wording, the Brits bought into this re-packaged version known as New Labour, and voted the Labour party into power in 1997 with Blair as the new PM.

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Republicans

priorities

It’s all a matter of priorities. What we consider important in a President determines how we will vote.  I know I have been ignoring the Democrats lately, and I fully intend to remedy that in this post.

If you believe you have too much control of your own life, and would like to give some of that control to the government, vote for a Democrat.

If you believe that your fellow citizens should be paying for your health care, and that it’s the right of all Americans to have government-funded health care (no matter how much it costs), then vote for a Democrat.

If you value experience over change (and you are a Democrat), vote for Hillary.

If you think that George Bush has irrevocably hosed the country,and that it doesn’t matter who’s President because the problems in this country are unfixable – then you probably need to take a break from politics for awhile.

If you can’t handle any of the pieces of good news coming out of Iraq, don’t worry, Hillary and Barack will fix that soon enough.  I do think that, despite what Hillary says, she would take a wiser course on troop withdrawals than Barack would. Hillary has tacked left and right on the war in Iraq, but I suspect that once the war is her responsibility, she will act differently than she claims now.

If you are pro-choice, vote for a Democrat.

If you value change for the sake of change, vote for Barack.

If you think your taxes are way too low and that the rich aren’t paying enough, vote for a Democrat.

If you hate corporations, who employ people and create jobs in addition to making a profit, McCain, Hillary, and Obama all have a little red meat for ya.

If you care more about making a statement to the national Republican party instead of settling for someone who will give us more of what conservatives want than either Democrat, don’t vote — and no matter who wins, you can’t complain about the result. By the way, how did that work in ’06?

But if you care what happens to Iraq, and you want to see more justices on the Supreme Court like Alito, Roberts, and Thomas — vote for McCain.

If you are willing to settle for less than Reagan (and you should), then McCain is the best of the non-Reagan group.

I’m not saying that McCain should get a pass for all those dreadful pieces of legislation bearing his name.  I’m just pointing out that yes, there are significant differences between McCain and the Democrats opposing him in this election.

Conservatives have a decision to make.  It’s not about falling in line with the wishes of the Washington elites or the talk radio pundit class who disagree with the Washington elites.  We have to decide what is in the best interest of our country at this point in our history with the problems we face as a nation.  I think McCain is the candidate we should support.  I’m not thrilled about the choice, but it’s not just about me.  It’s not only about Rush, Levin, or Ann Coulter.  It’s about all of us.  We should be making decisions on that basis, not merely in our own self-interest.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Republicans

the state of the race

Congratulations to Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee on winning in Iowa. It was a well-deserved win for each of them. Mitt Romney got a second-place finish out of his millions. He’s not dead yet, but he has some work to do to stay in this race until the end, especially if he loses New Hampshire. The Iowa results aren’t the end of the story. Hillary isn’t going away. Mitt isn’t going away. Fred is still alive…and his third place result showed that there are some conservatives who aren’t willing to settle for Mitt and Huck just yet. McCain might win New Hampshire, and if that happens, while it would be another setback for Romney, it still indicates that nothing will be decided this early in the primaries.

There are glaring deal-killing flaws in McCain and Huckabee (in my view anyway). McCain’s sins against conservatism are many, and the negatives outweigh the positives, especially on illegal immigration. Even if he has heard the voice of the people and decided to emphasize border security as a first priority for immigration reform, we can’t trust him not to cut deals with the Democrats whenever it is politically convenient. That’s his record. That’s what he has done in the Senate.

There are many things to like about Mike Huckabee as a person.  Christian conservatives love his boldness about his Christian faith and that he is pro-life.  We appreciate the fact that he is willing to allow his faith to influence his decisions, both personally and politically.  He would make a great pastor for a megachurch.  If he had a daytime talk show on TV, he might even draw a crowd there.  But are we seriously going to nominate Mike Huckabee to represent all Republicans as our nominee for President of the United States?  He’s not ready for the job now, and I don’t think he would be even if he had four more years to prepare for another run at the Presidency.

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Editorials

it’s not racial

That’s the best answer I can give to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson who wants to make Barack Obama’s standings in the polls about his race. It’s not about that. He asks if “white America” is ready to elect an African-American as our President, and cites our previous history with segregation, slavery, and civil rights.  There’s no question that we have struggled as a nation with racism, and to some degree we still do. But the only ones who seem to be obsessed with Obama’s race are the media. They keep bringing it up as if we SHOULD care about it.

Most Americans will vote based on which candidate they feel is the most capable of leading this country.  Many of the South Carolina Democrats in the poll he mentions are probably supporting Hillary over Barack for this reason, not because of racism. It doesn’t look like a coincidence that Mr. Robinson mentions South Carolina as part of the “white America” that he claims could keep Obama from the nomination. Even though I don’t generally give any Democrats the benefit of the doubt, I think that Robinson is trying to make a connection that isn’t there.  There may be a few who will not vote for Hillary because she’s a woman, or Barack because he’s African-American.  That’s not representative of the whole state of South Carolina, nor is it representative of this country overall.  I resent the implication that the main reason Barack isn’t making up much ground on Hillary in the polls in South Carolina and elsewhere is because of his race.  There are other reasons for that, but nothing that makes for an exciting story on the frontpage of a website or newspaper.

Americans deserve more credit than they are being given here. We can judge for ourselves whether a candidate has the right combination of charisma, experience, and leadership to be our choice for President. We can judge for ourselves what kind of President that candidate would be, not based on race, gender or even religion – and we don’t need the media’s approval for our choice.  The candidates on both sides would be wise to keep that in mind.

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

something barack obama needs to explain

Check out this lede from Philip Elliott, AP writer, in his article titled, “Obama: Don’t stay in Iraq over genocide”.

He says:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

Obama goes on to say that he believes that there will be bloodshed after we leave Iraq, and yet he thinks that the risk is greater if we stay than if we continue to “occupy Iraq and serve as a magnet for terrorist activity”. Well, at least Obama has acknowledged the possibility that there wouldn’t be a painless exit from Iraq. That’s a possibility not many Democrats are willing to even consider.

Barack Obama seems to believe that the answer to Iraq is international forces and more diplomacy. He sees the situation in Iraq as hopeless and chaotic enough that our troops should leave. He appears to suggest that it is time to let the Iraqis deal with the consequences of not meeting their political objectives. Many Democrats agree with Obama on this, but some are more committed to troop withdrawal than others. It’s a sympathetic position to take, even for a few stray Republicans who are deserting the President on this war.

If that’s his position, then how can he then support US military intervention in Darfur? What makes the Iraqis less worthy of being saved from genocide than the Sudanese?

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