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host · 02-09-2008, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tully Mars

Seems to me like if they are such moderates that would help them in the general much more then the primaries. But I could certainly be looking at it wrong.

I think McCain's rise is good news for the GOP regardless of what Rush, Coulter et el have to say. I don't think Clinton has a chance against him. Too many people hate her too much. All the talking heads I hear talk about there being nothing that energizes the rights base. I'd say if you want to energize the right- nominate Hillary.

Even if she wins she have a 51-49% edge in regards to popular support, give or take. IMO, the last thing the US needs is another four years of half the country literally hating their President.

If it comes down to Clinton V. McCain I'll be voting for McCain.

Romney lost because he showed a typical republican disconnect concerning the widening wealth gap. "Tax cuts for the rich" are increasingly viewed as a policy that is not beneficial to what remains of the middle class, The government has given back $100's of billions in tax cuts and ramped up borrowing from $18 billion in 2000, to $718 billion this year, yet the economy has somehow stalled? How could this be, with the literal creation of these hundreds of billions? McCain isn't dead yet because he is still perceived, because of his flip flopping, to have been against tax cuts for the rich, but he is for them.....

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/bu...ibution&st=nyt
Age of Riches
Two Candidates, Two Fortunes, Two Distinct Views of Wealth

By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: December 23, 2007

....Like thousands of other Americans in a global, high-technology economy in which government was pulling back and wealth was being celebrated, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney used talent, hard work and — as both have suggested — luck to amass fortunes. They became a part of a rising class of the new rich.

Whether this class is a cause for concern — whether it deserves some blame for the economic anxiety felt by many middle-class families — has become a central issue in the 2008 presidential race. And Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney are basing their candidacies in large measure on the very different lessons each has taken from his own success.

“Some people come from nothing to being wildly successful and their response is, ‘I did this on my own,’” Mr. Edwards said in an interview. “I came to a different conclusion. I believe that I did work hard, and I think people should work hard, but I think my country was there for me every step of the way.”

Today, he added, “the problem is all the economic growth is going to a very small group of people.”

Mr. Romney, by contrast, talks about the ways that his experiences at Bain showed him how innovative and productive the American economy can be and, particularly, how free markets can make life better for everyone.

“There is a model of thought among the Democrats — that the amount of money, the amount of wealth in a nation, is a fixed amount,” he said in an interview. “And that if Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are making a lot of money, that just means somebody else is not able to make as much. That happens to be entirely false.”

The two men represent a clear divide between the Democratic and Republican parties over whether the government should redistribute more wealth, from the rich downward, now that economic inequality is greater than it has been since the 1920s.

Mr. Romney and Mr. Edwards also represent a divide among the affluent themselves. Many of the new wealthy — the great majority, in all likelihood — see their success as a sign of this country’s economic strength. Yet there is also a minority — including Mr. Buffett and William H. Gates Sr., Mr. Gates’s father, who have both opposed eliminating the estate tax — worried about inequality.

Mr. Edwards is running perhaps the most populist campaign of any major candidate in a generation. He has called for universal health insurance, tighter trade restrictions, more financial aid for college students and higher taxes on the rich. In several cases, his main Democratic rivals have followed his lead. The political system is now rigged to help the rich, Mr. Edwards says, which makes a journey like his, from modest beginnings to the middle class and far beyond it, much harder than it was.

Mr. Romney agrees that the middle class is feeling pinched. But he says government can help by becoming smaller and by promoting competition in areas like health insurance and public schools. Those steps, as he sees it, would reduce taxes, lower the cost of health insurance and improve the quality of medical care and education.

“Rather than trying to take money from some to give to others, the best approach is to find ways to make everyone better off,” he said.

Even if neither man gets his party’s nomination, <h3>the argument over wealth and inequality is likely to play a big role in next year’s campaign. Polls show that the economy is now the top concern of many voters.......</h3>

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...52C1A963958260
THE RICH;Why Their World Might Crumble

By LESTER THUROW
Published: November 19, 1995

....As a result, since 1989 median household incomes have fallen more than 7 percent after correcting for inflation and family size, to $31,241 in 1993, from $33,585. Already working full time, women had no more extra hours of work effort to contribute to the family's income.

The same sharp rise in inequality has occurred in the distribution of wealth. The share of total net worth of the top one-half of 1 percent of the population rose from 26 to 31 percent in just six years, between 1983 and 1989. By the early 1990's the share of wealth (more than 40 percent) held by the top 1 percent of the population was essentially double what it had been in the mid-1970's and back to where it was in the late 1920's, before the introduction of progressive taxation.

These are uncharted waters for American democracy. Since accurate data have been kept, beginning in 1929, America has never experienced falling real wages for a majority of its work force while its per-capita G.D.P. was rising. In effect, we are conducting an enormous social and political experiment -- something like putting a pressure cooker on the stove over a full flame and waiting to see how long it takes to explode....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/bu...yt&oref=slogin
A Grim Diagnosis for the U.S., and a Prescription

By HARRY HURT III
Published: December 16, 2007

....Mr. Kuttner cites numerous studies and statistics that show a staggeringly disproportionate distribution of wealth in America. Among the most telling is the fact that the median income of working-age families has actually fallen by 5.4 percent over the last seven years, adjusted for inflation, even as the gross domestic product has grown by 18 percent.

The very rich, meanwhile, have become much, much richer. “For the richest one-tenth of 1 percent, inflation-adjusted income soared by 550 percent from about $3.6 million in 1970 to $24 million in 2000,” he writes in summarizing recently updated National Bureau of Economic Research studies. “And at the very top, the richest 400 people had 1.1 percent of all the income in America, more than double their 1992 share.”....

You must hate Hillary a whole bunch:

Quote:

http://mccain.senate.gov/public/inde..._id=&Issue_id=
MCCAIN URGES FINAL PASSAGE OF THE MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT OF 2006
September 28, 2006

Washington D.C. omg- U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today delivered the following remarks on the floor of the Senate regarding the Military Commissions Act of 2006:

....."Finally, I would note that there has been opposition to this legislation from some quarters, including the New York Times editorial page. Without getting into a point-by-point rebuttal here on the floor, I would simply say that I have been reading the Congressional Record trying to find the bill that page so vociferously denounced. The hyperbolic attack is aimed not at any bill this body is today debating, nor even at the Administration's original position. I can only presume that some would prefer that Congress simply ignore the Hamdan decision, and pass no legislation at all. That, I suggest to my colleagues, would be a travesty.

"I urge my colleagues to support this legislation."...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...type=printable
Bush Signs Terror Interrogation Law
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

..Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundamental to American values, such as a person's ability to go to court to protest their detention and <h3>the use of coerced testimony as evidence.</h3> Bush acknowledged that the law came amid dispute.

"Over the past few months, the debate over this bill has been heated and the questions raised can seem complex," he said. "Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few. Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously? And did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"

The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."

"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

"Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act," he said....

Quote:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/...te.transcript/
FORMER SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: I think you could argue that Americans overall are better off, because we have had a pretty good prosperous time, with low unemployment and low inflation and a lot of good things have happened. A lot of jobs have been created.

But let's have some straight talk. Things are tough right now. Americans are uncertain about this housing crisis. Americans are uncertain about the economy, as we see the stock market bounce up and down, but more importantly, the economy particularly in some parts of the country, state of Michigan, Governor Romney and I campaigned, not to my success, I might add, and other parts of the country are probably better off.

But I think what we're trying to do to fix this economy is important. We've got to address the housing, subprime housing problem. We need to, obviously, have this package go through the Congress as quickly as possible.

<h3>We need to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, which I voted for twice to do so.</h3> I think we need to eliminate the alternate minimum tax that sits out there and challenges 25 million American families.

COOPER: It sounds like that we're not better off is what you're saying.

MCCAIN: Pardon me?

COOPER: It sounds like you're saying we're not better off.

MCCAIN: I think we are better off overall if you look at the entire eight-year period, when you look at the millions of jobs that have been created, the improvement in the economy, et cetera.

What I'm trying to emphasize, Anderson, that we are in a very serious challenge right now, with a lot of Americans very uncertain about their future, and we've got to give them some comfort....

In the final year of the Clinton presidency, before a series of cuts in income and inheritance taxes that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthiest Americans, the national debt increased by just $18 billion:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/r...ebt_histo4.htm
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/r...ebt_histo5.htm

At the end of the present fiscal year, on Sept. 30, 2008, with the addtion of the $168 billion "stimulus" package spending, the annual debt increase will be $718 billion:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPD...application=np
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/r...ebt_histo4.htm
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/r...ebt_histo5.htm

Quote:

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/04/mccain-100-years/
McCain Flip Flops Again: 100 Years In Iraq ‘Would Be Fine With Me,’ Even ‘A Million Years’
During a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire last night, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told a crowd of roughly two hundred people that it “would be fine with” him if the U.S. military stayed in Iraq for “a hundred years“:

The vote will be about the economy/wealth inequity, and the war, and if the American people become enlightened enough to realize that a Reagan era scheme to tax them forward, a tax on the entire income of those grossing under $105,000 per year, results in a surplus of $186 billion per year
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fyOps.html

.....which is collected and immediately borrowed and spent by the government, is not counted in the white house's annual budget deficit announcements, and is used to camouflage the total impact of the Bush tax cuts, I don't think that Romney or McCain, two staunch backers of Bush foreign and tax policy, would be treated with the respect that they have been shown. Bush is a president who, in the midst of spending away the surplus SS tax collection, complains that the "problem" is the solvency of Social Security. The amount the government owes to the SS trust fund has more than doubled, to $2.18 trillion since Bush took office.