Wealth Redistribution, Tax Brackets and the Presidential Endgame

I presume that by "a bit difficult to parse", you mean "completely incoherent"?

Senator Honorable strikes again. Just nine more days of this and, if McCain loses, I suspect he will find the senate a chillier place than it used to be.

G.Gordon Liddy
Augusto Pinochet
BFF's

McCain's answer is a bit difficult to parse.

baby steps. Like Joe B says "completely incoherent" and he also has no frickin' idea what he is talking about. Which is different.

Maybe when MS does his post-election retrospective piece on McCain he'll notice that he is ALWAYS "difficult to parse." Or is saying nothing substantive at all.

We laid a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America. We owe the Chinese a half a trillion dollars. Spending was the -- was the, I think, the really biggest aspect, to a large degree. It weakens the dollar, it raises the cost of goods to Americans. The housing crisis combined with a country that's living way beyond its means is a combination which has put us into this great financial crisis we're in.

"And therefore, I am going to oppose a freeze on all but the most essential spending. Yes sir, there will be NO French Fruit Fry, I mean, FLY research in a McCain/whatshername administration."

I have to give it to him, Tom Brokaw actually went after McCain a couple of times. And John McCain was PI$$ED. I thought he would break that pen he carries around all the time for a second. From the last few posts it seems that MS might be getting ready to jump off the swing...What say you MS?

By the way I just found this video of paid volunteers working for the McCain campaign which I believe violates some kind of campaign rule. It doesnt help that a guy with the last name McCain comes out and assaults the woman doing the interviews either. A must see!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/27/8424/4447/771/642984

Throw in one or two also's and a betcha and you wouldn't be able to tell thge difference between him and Paling. First he said he went to Washington and it changed him, now he picked Palin and that seems to have left its mark. Maybe we should be more worried about McCains's associations -- Liddy, Pinochet -- bomb bomb Iran. Okay then.

Throw in one or two also's and a betcha and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between him and Palin. (previous comment stuck in moderatin again)

Re: the radio interview:

1. I assume TIME is working to obtain the full interview, and isn't just waiting for it to be posted on YouTube by IAmJoeThePlumber08.

2. In the clip, Obama laments as premature the civil rights movement celebration of its judicial victories, given the inadequacy of the courts to address bedrock economic inequities -- a reality he had seen firsthand as a community organizer. He is commenting -- accurately, as usual -- on this, not calling for the courts to provide reparations as it is being spinned.

Obama's observations amount to one of about a billion similar obvious, non-newsworthy takes on the current state of the civil rights movement. Not only does it not justify a 99-point, three row Drudge screamer, it shouldn't even get you to second base with a Vassar girl.

Obama's plan is real radical. He isn't even proposing to bring taxes back to the level they were under Clinton.

There was someone else in history who was opposed to taxes, like McCain and Palin, Karl Marx. Taxation, for the public welfare, is come to liberal economies.

Brokaw actually did pretty well. But I'm waiting for the reporter/pundit who asks him how his connections to Liddy and Chalabi are not only much more substantive than Obama's Ayers connection, but also much more problematic in terms of the actual harm they did to America.

And, perhaps, also quote the full "I wish we had done more . . . " Ayers quote to show that McCain has consistently taken it out of context.

I have to give it to him, Tom Brokaw actually went after McCain a couple of times. And John McCain was PI$$ED

And Krstol today advocates opening up both McCain and Palin to the press. "Could the press coverage get worse?" he asks:

http://politicallagoon.blogspot.com/2008/10/perils-of-nepotism.html

I have to give it to him, Tom Brokaw actually went after McCain a couple of times. And John McCain was PI$$ED

And Krstol today advocates opening up both McCain and Palin to the press. "Could the press coverage get worse?" he asks:

politicallagoon.blogspot.com/2008/10/perils-of-nepotism.html

That post, with the hypertext protocol prepended, disappeared.

Perhaps all these arguments about 'wealth redistribution' would be more coherent if we instead refered to it as 'consumer enhancement'. Since every decision made by every corporation seems to be geared toward lowering their tax liability and their labor cost, the direct result of their acting in their rational self-interest has been the utter decimation of their own customer base. Obama made it very clear in his response to Joe the Plumber. A healthy economy requires that the bulk of Americans feel safe spending money for things they want. If they can't do that then EVERYONE suffers including the so-called 'fat cats' who's own decisionmaking helped lead to the problem and who's own tax and political preferences shortsightedly make their own problems worse.

Before I comment on this subject which is near and dear to my heart, let me just say that everything about this new layout is inferior to the previous design. It is SUBSTANTIALLY less pleasant to look at and looks like any other cheap blog and not that of a mainstream news magazine. The password system is silly. No preview is hard to fathom. And I'm seeing some problems with paragraph spacing.

All in all, heckuva job High Sheriffs! Way to leave well enough alone!!

Wng -- what you're asking would require journalists to take an honest look at McCain and stop chalking up his most dishonest actions as typical campaign maneuvering. It woudl rquire an independent press to see their obligation to the nation as less like political consultants spinning for their preferred candidates and more as agents of investigation and enlightment for the citizenry on whose behalf their 1st ammendment right was given.

Having listened to that interview....why is in controversial? Obama said that:
- Cne of the great tragedies of civil rights is that is stopped with equal justice regardless of skin color, but did not acheive or strike down inequality brought about by wealth disparities (i.e. we all want equality of opportunity, but we're not acheiving it really until every child, regardless of family income, has the same educational opportunities).

- Courts could not address these problems because courts don't work that way; legislatures are the only place to address the effects of income disparity (a CONSERVATIVE position in favor of elected legislatures doing LEGISLATING, and courts sticking to the correct position of interpreting the law).

Where is the controversy here? He wasn't saying "steal from the rich, give to the poor" or "let's go socialism" -- he said that income-based inequalities still exist and were not eliminated by the civil rights movement, and that legislatures need to find ways to address them (whether it be improved financial aid for education to ensure lower and middle class families can afford to educate their children, etc.)

McCain's health-care proposal contains a $5000 refundable tax credit for families ($2500 individual). Whoever creates his talking points obviously assumes total ignorance on the part of his listeners.

Let's put socialism on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being a free-market paradise like Brazil, and 10 being a complete command economy like North Korea. On that scale, Obama is probably a 4 and McCain a 3.75. The silliest part of this 'socialism' talking point isn't so much the suggestion that Obama is a socialist, but that there is more than a hair's breadth between Obama and McCain on the scale of currently viable political economies.

Dirks-
.

Yeah. "Heavens!! Demand for our product is dropping. Consumers are hunkering down!! They're worried about the future. We'd better lay off 5000 people. Now."
.

It's for this reason that Krugman and others are advocating infrastructure projects. I don't see a useful alternative.

Hey, that period thing to serve as a paragraph break worked. Period followed by a carriage return. Life without preview. It's like using wordstar again, and reading articles about the coming of WYSIWIG.

This election is not about wealth redistribution, or about race, or about the wars in Iraq. It comes down to this - the Republicans abandoned their base of fiscal conservatives in favor of cultural conservatives. ...........

http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/10/26/republicans-intellectual-or-joe-six-pack/

I posted a link up thread that was stuck in moderation that is now liberated. It has a link to a kos diary that has a video that is a must see about volunteers getting paid from you know who's campaign.

Ohg Rea Tone,

Not that it matters but do you just post here to promote your firesidepost blogs?