host

What are your objections to Hillary, specifically, compared to the political stances of Obama and McCain, or is it visceral?

Tully Mars

My main problem with Hillary is she's too hated by too many. I sincerely do not think it's going to do the country any good to continue with a leader a large percentage of the country just flat out can not stand. She could cure cancer, solve Social Security, end world hunger and the right would still hate her.

And I'm really not a fan of the way she and her campaign have handled things as she gotten into a long slog in the primaries. It would appear she was blindsided by Obama and his supporters. The tactics she taken to right her ship, ads, comments, etc... I find distasteful. Bill's behavior, IMO, has been worse then hers, but I figure that's purely by design.

Add all that with if she wins the number of years this country will have been led by either a Bush or a Clinton and I see an equation for some body new to have a shot at resolving the major issues facing the US.

All that said I had decided to vote for McCain if she won the primary. In part because I figure the GOP has created crap load of problems over the past 7 years, let them solve them. But the more I read and listen to McCain I'm almost certain I wouldn't be able to support him.

So if it comes down to Hillary V. McCain I might just go to the beach and collect shells.

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ngdawg

Compared to? I can't stand the lot of them.
Democrats think the answer to everything is pay for it, except they're never the ones who are paying, we are. Republicans are still struggling with the idea that this is the 21st century. Not one person who was ever elected to office has kept a promise that mattered. Cronyism, nepotism and good old fashioned ass-kissing gets you ahead in Washington. Politicians, as a separate human race, are the only ones with the ability to talk out of both sides of their mouths and make the gullible believe both sides.
Eh, I guess it's 'visceral'.

Tully Mars

Democrats are tax payers just like everyone else. So I'd say they are paying for it. And this not paying for things is killing our economy. GOP used to run ads calling every Dem "just another tax and spend liberal" The way the money been spent by the GOP the Dems should start running ads calling every GOP "just another borrow and spend conservative."

The amount of debt were leaving our kids (hell our kids, kids, kids at this point) is criminal, IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

To paraphrase someone else- you add a trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

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dc_dux

Last week, Bush proposed the first $3 trillion annual federal budget....five years after he offered the first $2 trillion budget.

It took nearly two hundred years for the annual budget to pass the $1 trillion mark and that was a Reagan budget.

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Tully Mars

The economy and an extended war in the middle east had a big part in taking down the USSR.

The way see it we can't go at this pace very long. Hopefully I'm wrong.

If I'm right prehaps in the not so distant future many Texans and those guys in Northern California will get their wish to become sovereign nations.

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ngdawg

And how much are those Democrats making annually? Of course they should be tax payers, but they are NOT like everyone else, neither are the Republicans. Both are full of front runners totally out of touch. You think Hillary, Barak and John have trouble making their car payments or the phone bill? National health care plan Hillary was so fond of? Whose pocket gets emptied first for that one? And I wouldn't exactly give Bush my checkbook to balance either, so it's not like I'm partial one way or the other.
Our Social Security tax deductions surpass the federal ones, yet Social Security is 12 trillion in debt. That didn't happen overnight. It takes some really good money wrangling to be that irresponsible and I put the blame equally over the shoulders of everyone elected to office in Washington.
Yea, the president proposes and may even sign off on budgets, but it's not a one man operation. And here we have two people that haven't even gotten all the green out from behind their ears and now they want to run the country....
Have mercy....

Tully Mars

Well the Dems you mention make a ton of money and there also the one's saying we need to roll back the tax cuts on the most wealthy. So while none of them are having any troubles making a car payment, they are cutting their own financial throats by raising their own taxes.

You make some good points about the debt ad how we got here. We just can't keep going at this rate. The Canadian dollar is equal to and at times higher then the US's. We keep going at this rate and it will be one to one with the Japaneses Yen.

But while you blame the elected officials, I blame the people who keep voting for them.

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mixedmedia

I agree with this.

Plus, I don't think this is the time to start holding our candidates up to standards like having trouble with their car payments. Since when has any presidential candidate been a middle-class American? I certainly didn't hear these sorts of comments coming from democrats in 2004 when Kerry was running.

Fact is, we need a moderate, rational person in the White House and personally, I think Obama, Hillary or McCain will be a giant step in the right direction. This election doesn't scare me at all. Nothing could be more frightening than that 2004 election and we all managed to get through that...well, of course, we did. Some brown people in other countries didn't fare as well.

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

ngdawg

It's a cycle. Politicians get those people to believing their promises and where they stand on issues. Don't know if you remember Bush Sr's "read my lips. No new taxes!" Nope...just increased ones. Here in NJ, Corzine made the same "promise" then in less than 6 months our sales tax went from 6% to 7% and he's trying to get us to swallow his proposal for a 200% increase in road tolls and add tolls to the three interstates that go through NJ. To "cut spending", he wants to release prisoners and mental patients, yet the state spent millions renovating a mental hospital that isn't being used.
Hey, I didn't vote for him...

Tully Mars

I don't know the more I read about McCain and his plans on Iraq the more I believe him when he says the economy isn't his thing. Scary, just plain scary. Not GWB scary but still damn scary. So you're right any of these candidates beat what we've had for the past two terms.

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mixedmedia

Well, you have a point there...I could have easily left McCain out of the equation, but I wanted to at least have the appearance of being non-partisan, lol. He is a bit of a freak. No denying that.

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Tully Mars

It's a cycle alright. A cycle that needs to be broken. Yes, I remember Bush Sr. I remember them all back to LBJ. They pretty much all say they won't raise taxes, then they do. But hey when you gotta build bridges to nowhere the money has to come from somewhere.

Tolls, fees and licensing are great ways for politicians to raise your taxes and still be able to look into the camera and say I didn't raise taxes. In reality they're just taxes with different names attached to them. And who are effected most by these taxes? The poor and the middle class. But if you do anyway with things like the estate tax you have to make up that income somewhere (even China and Japan are only willing to lend you so much for so long.) And who benefits from those reductions? Rich people like the politicians telling you they won't raise your taxes. Well, rich is a relative term, but I'd consider people with over 4 million per couple rich. That's the current exemption per couple. In 2009 it's set to go to 7 million.

http://www.cbpp.org/4-12-05tax.htm

Screw that! After what the GOP's done to the US over the past 7 years I'll be hard pressed to ever vote GOP again, almost everything they said hasn't worked out the way they planned, or at least what they told us they planned. Smaller government? Yeah right! Less spending? Not even close! No to nation building? No, no now we're spreading freedom. Freedom it turns out looks a lot like a military occupation, who knew? An occupation that may just break our economy beyond repair. And when the economy goes to shit what's the answer? Well borrow more money aboard and go into deeper debt so you can send everyone a $300-$600 check of course. That'll get stuff turned around.

I may not vote Dem, may just sit it out and watch to see if Paris forgot her panties again.

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ngdawg

But oddly enough, the US and Peru have come into an agreement where Peru will not pay any export duties on US products. Wanna take bets on how many other countries want some of that deelishus US pie?
On the one hand, I can see the reasoning. Don't charge the country, and what they "would" pay in duty taxes conceivably goes into buying more US products, thus preserving jobs.
On the other hand, that is less income for the government and it's gotta come from somewhere.
Then, if you have a third hand, US companies are outsourcing so much and moving production to other countries, just how much is Peru thinking of buying and how much is really pure US product?

wow. serious thread jack there^

loquitur

If McCain is that bad, then Hillary shouldn't be unelectable.

ngdawg

I think what just drives me nuts about this whole thing is this country's penchant for the two-party system that virtually locks out anyone not a Dem or GOP.
Last election, I voted for Ralph Nader. This year I just might vote for whatever is the furthest name to the right in the columns....

Hillary is too green. She's still considered a "junior senator", as is her Dem opposition. And they spend too much time knocking each other, skirting some serious issues and changing their minds, according to some op-eds I've read lately. HIllary would not be where she is now if not for hubby.
McCain? Anti-choice, anti-gay and a former POW...which just makes me think he's gonna have some serious PTSD and go hiding under the presidential desk at some point. Plus his age is a factor. Reagan was old enough and his dying with Alzheimer's makes me suspect he was showing some signs of it in office.
Truth be told, I'd have probably gone with Giuliani had he not quit....if nothing else but a viable choice to keep Hillary out of office.

host

A moderate? What do you think a moderate will do, confront the corporatists or cooperate with them? How do you see that there can be a middle ground?

McCain, a moderate? He fell in love at age 43. He could have married his second wife, and stayed at arms length from her ex-con "mobbed up" father. Instead, he went to work for him and accepted him as his "king maker". When did the man's money become clean enough to not stain the character and reputation of the former Naval aviator POW that he bought with it?

Do you think a "moderate" will transfer any measurable power or wealth from the corporatists in control, to "the people"? Doesn't "cooperate" mean to operate alongside the corporatists?

A moderate won't "take" anything from the military industrial complex in this country. Wouldn't "wrest" from their control, be a more accurate description?
This guy was <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=117353&highlight=huey+long">the last American politician to do it</a>, and he was no moderate!

MuadDib

Quite frankly, yes. That is if you are talking about a left-leaning moderate. In fact, that moderate will get more accomplished towards those goals than a "liberal" president. The fact of the matter is that the presidency is built for moderates while the place for more extreme liberals and conservatives is the legislature. A moderate can build consensus between to two extremes there and buy themselves gains in the direction they want to go in. On the other hand, more extremely oriented presidents will never accomplish any of those goals because they won't be able to compromise without losing their base unless equally far left/right elements control both the house and senate as well as their own party. That is not the case with the democrats, as the majority in both houses and the party are far more moderate than liberal. That is why the goals you seem to desire will become closer to a reality by a moderate getting elected than not.

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host

Democratic house and senate leadership in the current congressional term have been models of moderation, exemplary in their restraint and total willingness to accomodate the republican congressional minoirty and the republican president. Please name one example of what that moderate approach has achieved for democrats. Congress has shown itself to be a bipartisan majority supporting corporatism at every turn.

I don't think we have the time that you and mixedmedia impress me as thinking we have to unravel this mess. The currency valuation deterioration and the overall economy, petroleum dependence, housing valuation and bond insurer implosion, etc. all tell me that there is limited opportunity, if any, to confront and wrest corporate political control from the corporatist bloc.

Roosevelt as radical reformer, was a poor substitute for Long in 1933, but he was influenced by Long's radicalism, nipping at his heels, until the day Long was shot in Sept., 1935. Our only hope is deep cuts in military spending and the intelligence and domestic secuirty apparatus, with an immediate military withdrawal from Iraq and a crash program of energy conservation, including severe sanctions againt one occupant commuting vehicles.

A wish for a moderate president, in these times of national emergency, aggravated by corporatist domination of government, seems like pissing in the wind to me. We'll have a $700 billion increase in <a href="http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np">national debt</a>, between 10/1/07 and 9/30/08. Take a look at the <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=113978">"1992 Redux"</a> thread, and then tell me how I have this "all wrong"......

mixedmedia

Thanks for reminding me that we're all screwed and there's nothing we can do about it. Sometimes I forget. I guess I got distracted from the wave of truth while standing in the tidepool of election year optimism. Because for all of your efforts and passion, host (and, to a large extent I agree with you) you too, sir, are just pissing in the wind. So was Huey Long.

So I am going to do what I can to keep a John McCain or a Mike Huckabee out of the White House for the next four years. I'm going to vote for a moderate Democrat. These are the only terms with which I can think about it - practical terms.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Tully Mars

His myspace page used to say he supported gay marriage, esp. if it were between two hot females. But I think that was just a little Mike in the ointment.

http://mike.newsvine.com/_news/2007/...ng-john-mccain

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loquitur

Actually, if you think this election will change things other than at the margins, you probably are unduly optimistic. Consider this essay in today's NY Times, which is actually pretty perceptive:The US is not a revolutionary society. Our country tends to prefer to change incrementally, not spasmodically.

guyy

Yeah sure. That's why Americans patiently waited until Britain decided it was in it's best interests to grant their colonies independence. And civil war? That would be unthinkable in these united states. American workers would never press for a better deal or use tactics like the sit-down strike. Moreover, the wave of rapid social change which brought social welfare systems and made consumer societies possible missed our shores.

Right?

ngdawg

Actually, that's not entirely true. Social Security was implemented in 1935 by FDR in response to the Great Depression-hardly a rapid social change. The Depression itself was a result of investors buying into stock with stock-as investors wished to cash in their options, lo and behold, there wasn't any money to be had and the stock market crashed.(short version).
SS itself was modeled after the Civil War Pension program, which paid to soldiers from that war.
To help the families left destitute by the Crash, Roosevelt implemented Walfare, also in 1935. Before then, families depended on local government, along with private charities, to help, but with over 13,000,000 people left penniless, it behooved Roosevelt to step in and create national programs. His first priority was, of course, to create jobs, but for those who could not work(children, the elderly or handicapped), these two social programs were a godsend.
I guess if you called the Crash of 1929 "social change", then the reasons for our government assistance programs would apply.

We aren't a nation of rapid social change. We are a stewing pot on medium heat that when left to heat a bit too long, boils over. Vietnam went on for almost 20 years before several years of protesting, the enormity of lives lost and the futility of it forced Washington to rethink it. Civil Rights came to a boil in the early 60's but was stewing for over 100 years before that.

loquitur

guyy, the us tends to prefer incremental change, as I wrote. There has to be a crisis before more drastic change will be tolerated. That's what the Great Depression was. It's what the Civil War was.

ottopilot

Surprise, surprise, 3 more wins for Clinton... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/campaign_rdp

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loquitur

As I said, she's not unelectable.
She has been my senator for 8 years, and I think she did a pretty good job: she worked hard, kept herself informed, did constituent service, etc etc. I was happy to vote for her last time around. I think she gets a bum rap from people who call her the dragon lady and other such lovely terms of endearment. She is far from ideal in terms of what a president should be, but most candidates are. Maybe I feel this way because I saw her on a non-national stage, as my Senator, and didn't view her only through the prism of the predatory press in the Capitol. Could be. But it seems to me she certainly is not unelectable by any means.

Yakk

The press isn't likely to forget that it is owned by the rich. If it does forget and fails to act in the best interests of the board, the CEO and the stockholders, the employee will get fired.

That is how capitalism works, silly.

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loquitur

Interesting how the Democratic race is viewed from abroad. Here is an excerpt from an analysis in the The Economist which confirms my view that Hillary Clinton is not at all unelectable:To my eyes this looks accurate. There has always (well, for at least fifty years) been a fissure in the Democratic party that broke basically as populists vs social democrats. And it's still happening. I have no clue what will happen.

The_Jazz

Someone with photoshop skillz HAS to start work immediately on that "Bob the Builder" referrence.

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Strange Famous

Well, I missed a lot of this.

I can only say again what I originally said.

If the Democrats elect Hillary, they are voting for four more years of the Republicans.

I hope they make their choice wisely.

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