intellectual cotton candy. All fluff and airy. It leaves you with a sugar high, but does not satiate. It leaves one pining for some protein, like fish (brain food). Conservatives believe in teaching a person how to fish, to provide for his or her own sustenance, not rely on Obama's variation of a socialistic safety net where market distortions yield fish shortages and some government bureaucrat decides whether you have fish and if so, what type and how much you may have. Furthermore, Obama's nanny state will even regulate how you may prepare and cook your fish.
Democrats this past week paid homage to Obama this past week, standing at the foot of the Barackopolis. Obama scorned Reagan's vision of America as a shining city on the hill; he's far more concerned with validating the cheers of thousands of anti-American European socialists whom resent American leadership and influence. Obama wants to outsource American leadership to international bodies like the UN, which has been impotent in resolving crises such as genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.
Barack Obama pays lip service to bipartisanship and listening to alternate points of view and points out his "proven judgment", showcasing a speech he made in 2002 against the liberation of Iraq. But for more than 18 months while politically exploiting Iraq at the center of his candidacy, Obama voted for unconditional withdrawal from an unstable Iraq, voted against funding the surge policy, which by any objective account has been a success, and refused to consult with or visit with General Petraeus (beyond a perfunctory question or two in committee meetings). Tell me, Barack Obama: is that your idea of validating your readiness for assuming the mantle of Commander in Chief of the United States? Now that the military footprint advocated by Senator McCain, on the record, as early as 2003 and not accepted by Bush until late 2006, has worked to lower drastically military and civilian casualties in Iraq, the Iraq military and police force has grown to a critical mass where the fighting has now transitioned in many cases to the Iraqis with American logistics support, where significant progress has been made on 15 of 18 benchmarks--benchmarks, by the way, which were established by bipartisans without Obama's support, Obama now wants to take credit for (without sharing any of the political cost, which McCain has borne) withdrawal with honor made possible? Tell me, if Obama refused to negotiate benchmarks and funding, to go beyond perfunctory questioning of Iraqi operation commanders, what exactly is the post-partisan, bipartisan politics Obama spent the first part of the campaign talking about? It seems to me he is taking about little more than token Republican participation with no real impact on the decisionmaking process. But even more to the point of this sham pretense of Obama being Commander in Chief, while running down the need to replenish military hardware and possibly buff up our forces in Afghanistan, Barack Obama is talking about cuts to the Defense Department. Thus, is there any quesion about why the GOP considers Obama not ready to lead?
Oh, but Barack Obama has a simple solution to that: he'll just have all his 3AM calls call-forwarded to Joe Biden. No doubt Joe Biden can find something Neil Kinnock wrote on American foreign policy he can use.
The Democrats have had the New Deal, the Great Society, and now the Obamanation. I find the Obamanation abominable. Barack Obama hearkens us back to the Golden Age of the Clintons. You remember, right, when the average unemployment rate was higher than under the past 8 years (despite 9/11, the stock market meltdown, Enron and related financial scandals), fewer Americans owned homes, taxes were higher, and federal revenues lower? When a Republican House kept President Clinton honest, prevented him from expanding the federal bureaucracy into health care, kept sending him welfare reform measures until he finally passed it, and produced the first balanced budget? When the economy was goosed in the late 1990's by Greenspan flooding the economy with dollars in advance to a much-hyped Y2K crisis and companies expedited purchases originally planned for the early Bush years?
Obama opposes what John McCain has suggested: lowering uncompetitive business taxes, among the highest (next to Japan's) among the developed economies. So he rephrases it as a "giveaway" to Big Oil. Yet at the same time he whines about American companies shifting unprofitable businesses overseas and investing where taxes and other business costs are lower. He says he wants companies to invest more in our domestic economy. Obama just doesn't get it (I'm using Obama's choice of words); why exactly does Obama think McCain's business tax is intended to do? Barack Obama, you had Ted Kennedy pass the torch to you during the convention. John F. Kennedy was my President. He cut business taxes. And, Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.
Obama has made lots of promises. He would have promised a chicken in every pot, but Obama's support for the Bush-Cheney Energy Bill, opposed by McCain and which included tax giveaways to Big Oil and to Big Agriculture in terms of inefficient corn ethanol, has helped ignite food inflation, including chicken feed, which ultimately results in higher-costing chicken. Obama has been egged on by billionaire Warren "I don't pay enough taxes" Buffett. I have a suggestion for Warren Buffett and every other wealthy American (including Bill Clinton) whom wants to validate Obama's socialist ideals: Instead of simply using your accountants to minimize the amount of taxes you pay, why don't you volunteer to pay the pre-Reagan rate of 70% to the Treasury (I have it on good authority the IRS will accept more than the minimum due), and instead of leaving $32B to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, why don't you bequeath your estate to the federal government in gratitude for what this country has provided you during your lifetime?
Obama wants to reassure people he's talking about a virtually painless type of socialism that only affects 5% of households. He wants people to conveniently forget than the Reagan-Bush tax cuts have taken millions of working Americans off the income taxroll (with the exception of FICA payroll taxes). Now, of course, if Americans earn more money, they just might have to pay some income tax. So Obama is going to give citizens not paying a dime in income taxes a tax rebate. Imagine that--the government will actually pay you for not working or not working to advance your earning power, courtesy of Obama. Conservatives have a word for that--it's called welfare.
Obama and Democrats are addicted to higher taxes; they always lowball the costs of their social programs and then pass along increases time and again, just like they promised back in 1983 that with the payroll increase and gradually increasing eligible wage ceiling, social security was "fixed". Do you honestly expect when the wealthy adjust to increased tax rates and the Democrats all of a sudden fall below tax revenue projections, they will be satisfied? That's not change; it's more of the same.
The McCain-Palin team is reformist and maverick and represents authentic change; McCain and Palin have bucked their own party when necessary in the interests of the common good, are tight with the taxpayer's buck, and have reached out to people in the other party to get things done.
