Debate III

Yeah, Obama presents the better personality. McCain is old fashioned at best and crotchety at worst. Case closed. I think Obama will win. Now we will have a President who would be great to talk to over a cup of Earl Grey (I’m a tea drinker myself) versus a pint of beer.

Pretty pics of the Obamas:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/16/the-obamas-greatest-famil_n_132339.html

Thought you might get a kick out of these.

You guys, did you watch the “fourth” debate? By that I mean the Alfred E. Smith dinner, where presidential candidates exchange comedy routines about each other?

Check it out, McCain went first, followed by Obama. McCain’s is split into two videos, watch it first, trust me it will make less sense if you watch Obama first or if you watch the videos out of order.

I wanna hear it, who was more funny tonight? Put your partisan hats aside and answer truthfully. Cretin you’re a comedian so I know you’ll make the right call.

McCain 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Goaj5V4tZoc
McCain 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrqoSyKsAPw
Obama: http://www.myfoxny.com/myfox/MyFox/pages/sidebar_video.jsp?contentId=7663908&version=1&locale=EN-US

LOL LOL LOL!!!!

McCain wants to be the center of attention? Are you on crack? McCain? Obama has been on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine what, 80 times this year? Obama styles around during the debates like he’s posing for GQ.

McCain got so ignored during the primaries that at one point he had to carry his own luggage through the airport terminal.

But it’s McCain who wants to be the center of attention?

OMFG! ROTFL.

You might be beyond repair, or seriously drunk in the middle of the day. Which is it?

I am glad I was able to amuse you so.

How does the fact magazines don’t want McCain on their covers mean McCain wouldn’t like to be on them? His carrying his own luggage is a pitiable image for sure, but I already said I felt pity for the guy.

It was this article that made me think he is driven more by egomania than the desire to do good:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain

That stuff about the Clinton’s made me wilt as well. It reminded me of what a pair of twats they have been.

You really hate Obama don’t you? As much as I hate Palin perhaps? This is incomprehensible to me. I cannot believe you were ever a Democrat.

And stop with the LOLs and ROTFLs already. You sound like a 12-year-old boy.

Oh man, I can’t do that much homework, it’s Friday night for god’s sake.

You make some very good points here and I wouldn’t pretend to know that much about the ancient history of the Democratic party. I do know, however, know that the Republican’s have done many good things in the past. Which is one of the reasons the last 8 years has been such a disgrace for them. (And the reason you should not be voting for them.)

I also understand Democrats have been a bunch of pussies for years. Is this not the accepted wisdom? You are not teaching me anything new here. But one man’s “Marxism/socialism and big government ideology” is another mans idea of a fairer society. Obama is not a Marxist or a Socialist. He just believes that the free market, left to it’s own devices, leaves a lot of people out in the cold, and we can’t rely on the charity of the super rich to lift the poorest out of poverty. That is what being a Democrat means to me.

If Obama was proposing an 80% tax on incomes above 250K I would not vote for him. If he were proposing a 45% tax I would. The reason people here are so unwilling to pay there taxes is because the government of late has been so shit at spending them. When I am in England, a country with much less money than America, I am always amazed at how much nicer everything is. The roads are newer, the street signs and traffic lights are more attractive, the bus stations and railway stations are more pleasant, it seems like I’ve come 20 years into the future. There is free healthcare and free education and all these things are accepted as a right.

I know you’ll ask who is paying for it all. Well I can assure you, my taxes since I got here have not been any lower than the taxes I paid in the UK. The super rich pay a little bit more – not that much more!

If your position is that you can’t believe any government can be trusted to spend taxpayer money wisely, then you are right, I understand you. But what the Republicans have been up to is worse than this. They have been taxing our grandchildren, by cutting taxes now and borrowing more and more money from China. McCain was complicit in this madness. He is not a decent Republican from days of yore, he is very much like Bush/Cheney.

I believe that an Obama administration would do as good a job as the most successful European governments and help those who need the most help, whilst not taxing the rich more than any decent-minded rich person ought to be willing to pay. Paying tax ought to be a patriotic duty. If you believe in your country, you should want it to work for everyone in it.

- But one man’s “Marxism/socialism and big government ideology” is another mans idea of a fairer society. Obama is not a Marxist or a Socialist. He just believes that the free market, left to it’s own devices, leaves a lot of people out in the cold, and we can’t rely on the charity of the super rich to lift the poorest out of poverty. That is what being a Democrat means to me.

I bet you think that the subprime crisis is a result of deregulation. That’s what the Democrats will tell you. The reality is the opposite. It’s the hand of regulation on the part of liberals who wanted to create a “fair society”. I’ve covered this already, but again the Community Reinvestment Act, as it was reformed under Clinton and at the behest of liberal Democrats, was a major catalyst for the subprime crisis. By forcing banks to loan money to people who can’t repay they set the financial markets up for a massive fall.

America was not founded on a promise that all people will achieve the same result. America was not founded on the concept of everyone having a fair result for their life choices. America was founded on the idea that all people should have the same basic rights and opportunities, and that all men and women are *created* equal. Not that all men and women end up equal. For that you should live in Europe or any Communist country. Haven’t we already seen how that is doomed to fail? We do not need a cradle to the grave society where the federal government provides for everything. That is why we have states, Americans have different views on how to live their lives. The point of America is the pursuit of happiness, not the guarantee of it. Why does this basic principle constantly escape some people? You are very wrong and you are confusing being a Democrat with being a quasi-socialist.

You say you don’t pretend to know the “ancient history” of the Democratic party. Wouldn’t you like to learn some of that before you proclaim what it means to be a Democrat? Or are we really living in an Orwellian world where words and principles no longer have a foundational meaning?

– The reason people here are so unwilling to pay there taxes is because the government of late has been so shit at spending them. When I am in England, a country with much less money than America, I am always amazed at how much nicer everything is. The roads are newer, the street signs and traffic lights are more attractive, the bus stations and railway stations are more pleasant, it seems like I’ve come 20 years into the future. There is free healthcare and free education and all these things are accepted as a right.

The government here has *never* been anything but “shit” at spending our taxes. No government ever has. There are only a few things that our federal government is effective at and one of them is national defense. As it happens that is one of the very few things that it is constitutionally required to provide us. Even when it comes to spending, they can be negligent and wasteful in that category.

The reason places like England can provide those amenities is because they don’t have even a fraction of the economic and military responsibility of the United States. It sure must be nice to sit back and build a modern quasi-socialist society with the enlightenment earned after having pillaged the world for hundreds of years, while America has got your back. If not for the defense spending of America in the latter half of the 20th century Europe would likely be waving a big red flag. America has provided a deterrent to Communism and Fascism in Europe and its been paid for with the blood and treasure of American workers.

You talk about the British healthcare system. It has some advantages, but it has some major problems. Do you want to go into them? I am happy to do an in depth discussion of healthcare in Europe and Canada and all the problems that it has.

You need to understand that the kind of gigantic government that Obama and an unchecked Democratic super-majority will impose is one that has no record of success or achievement in this country. Government at the implementation level in the US is not partisan. It is bureaucratic. Why should we be convinced that a health care system run by they US Government would be any better managed than any other failed program that came before it? Think it will be run as well as the House Financial Services committee or the House Banking Committee? There’s an LOL for you that should scare the effing shit out of you.

You talk about things being accepted as right. There are lots of things we’d like to be, but in reality they don’t actually work when planned centrally. Please do not bring your central planning idealogy to this country, America has never strived for mediocrity. There are so many problems with Obama’s healthcare plan I won’t get into them here. Do you know what rationing is? Are you aware that under a plan like Obama’s there may be a day very soon where healthcare burden-ship on the government have skyrocketed so high that they will have to start chosing who doesn’t get the expensive cancer treatment? Think it will be the guy in his early 70’s or the guy in his 30’s? You better hope you’re not the old guy in that case. Glad to go in depth on what an abject failure it will likely be if you’re interested. It’s apparent that few people have given any thought to this. It’s actually frightening.

– If Obama was proposing an 80% tax on incomes above 250K I would not vote for him. If he were proposing a 45% tax I would…… I know you’ll ask who is paying for it all. Well I can assure you, my taxes since I got here have not been any lower than the taxes I paid in the UK. The super rich pay a little bit more – not that much more!

Do you know what the problem is with this line of thinking? I’ll tell you. This tax policy of Obama’s, and the attitude you have towards tax policy, will doom this country’s economy in a way that will lead to decades of despair. Do you make $250k? In a bad year I am not far away from $250k. If my company were to have a good year, I would break that mark. And you know what? My taxes under your plan would skyrocket. It is not “a little bit more”, it is a massive amount. It is not just an increase in the marginal tax rate on my income (of several percent under Obama’s plan at first, and likely to rise higher as our debt continues to grow), it is also the removal of the cap on payroll tax. That means that I would be taxed on social security for an additional $150k on day one! Do you have any iota what that would do to my financial situation? That is tens of thousand of dollars on day one that I will no longer have to spend.

You think I am wealthy? I am not wealthy. I don’t have high net worth in the millions of dollars. I can barely afford a house where I live due to the geographic differential in the cost of living, which your candidate’s tax policy has no intention of taking into account. I don’t have a guarantee that my job will pay me what it does next year, let alone next week. This tax policy of yours would be devastating. Not just to me, but to everyone who I buy things from.

You think I’m kidding? I am not. You want evidence? Here it is. If Obama is elected, I will move out of the state I currently live in (where I already pay well above 5% on my income tax) and move to a state with low or no income tax. I am already lining up job offers to prepare for this eventuality. I kid you not, and I am not alone.

As a consequence I will take a job that by definition will earn me somewhere between 30%-40% less than I make now. Not only will the US Government lose out on the tax revenue from my previous income, so will my former state. And you know who else loses out? You. And everyone else who benefits from a prosperous America. I will buy less goods. And you know what else? I will be less productive. I will not work as hard because I have no incentive to. And when I work less, the country’s productivity will go down, because I will not be alone. And do you know what that will do to our GDP? It will go down, and we will have a much deeper recession. How soon do you think I will move back to the state I currently live in? Answer, not very soon at all. This will have consequences for many years.

Still want to describe me as “super rich” during the years I would break $250k? Think again. Joe the Plumber is right. There is nothing fair in taking the wealth earned by hard working Americans and not just taxing it for government spending, but actually redistributing it to other people who don’t make as much money as them. That would include people who have high net worth, but get paid very little in actual cash. Someone with a million in the bank but earns $249k per year would be treated as “middle class” where as I would be considered rich? How about some young adult who is going to college and earning $24k a year in their part time job. Is there something in the constitution that says everyone is guaranteed a college education? What if that young adult is studying some bullshit liberal indoctrination, think I want to pay for that?

This is nothing short of asinine and it proves why these liberal tax policies don’t work. This is not a fair society, it is massive government welfare that will cripple the essence of what made this country what it is today.

–If your position is that you can’t believe any government can be trusted to spend taxpayer money wisely, then you are right, I understand you. But what the Republicans have been up to is worse than this. They have been taxing our grandchildren, by cutting taxes now and borrowing more and more money from China.

And you think that liberals would do better? Obama has already proposed policies that exceed a trillion dollars in spending. Where the **** is that money going to come from but increased debt!! Are you not paying attention?

Look I am no fan of George Bush’s spending and noodled backbone when it comes to vetoing (zero vetos of Republican controlled congress). But you yourself don’t know the history of the Democrats, and now you’re telling us you know the history of the Republicans? Even under Bush, what we saw in the past 8 years will seem like an exercise in frugality when compared to what you would witness under Obama and a super-majority of Democrats.

Come clean and step back. Look at this with a fresh mind before you fall deeper into the meme that the Democratic party has dreamed up for you. I am no longer a Democrat because I grew sick and tired of being played for a complete fool. Being independent is much more fun. Politicians have to earn your vote and provide something resembling of a well reasoned argument in order to earn my vote.

Our country needs balance right now and someone willing to say no to corruption and endless spending. The Democrats in Washington DC will walk all over Obama like you have never seen. He will have no way of saying no, no leverage and frankly no personal motivation to even in his own ideological mindset.

– McCain was complicit in this madness. He is not a decent Republican from days of yore, he is very much like Bush/Cheney

McCain has been less complicit in this madness than the other candidate. McCain has been a fighter against wasteful spending and even tax cuts without proper budgeting. McCain voted against tax cuts under Bush because his plan lacked spending controls and he lost major political capital as a result. Where on earth are you getting this talking point from? Obama has tried to use the federal budget like an ATM machine for his best (and richest) constituents. You mock McCain and you have the nerve to call him indecent after what he’s done for his country? Decency cannot be questioned in McCain’s case, at least certainly not in comparison to Obama.

– I believe that an Obama administration would do as good a job as the most successful European governments and help those who need the most help, whilst not taxing the rich more than any decent-minded rich person ought to be willing to pay. Paying tax ought to be a patriotic duty. If you believe in your country, you should want it to work for everyone in it.

You don’t understand. It’s not an Obama administration that would be running these programs forever. These programs that are created under his administration, even if we allow for your fantasy that they would be run properly under him, would be around forever. They would be subject to the same feckless government employees that permeate the rest of the programs that fail. How did you find the process of becoming a citizen? Think that was smooth sailing? Try taking a look at other government run programs. These massive entitlement programs are almost impossible to repeal. You would know this if you would take time to study American history. I don’t say this to be snide, but you are amazingly quick to dismiss anything that begins to chip away at your rationale for supporting this man.

As for not taxing “rich” people more than they ought to be willing to pay, I already covered this above. Under Obama’s tax my burden would *break* 65%, when you account for state and local taxes (including property and sales, as well as gasoline) and capital gains. We didn’t even cover that. Capital gains? If Obama is elected, I will sell every share of stock I own. You think I kid you? I don’t. Why would I risk the market volatility in the hopes that my portfolio would appreciate only to know that I would be penalized for taking this risk, at a much higher rate under Obama. Can you imagine the consequences over time of people taking their money out of the market and buying tax free fixed income instruments, most likely at the municipal level and of no value to the federal government that will need that money?

This is called capital flight. Obama’s capital gains tax policy *increases* the cost of innovation in this country. Less money going into the market means less money that corporations will have to invest in innovation and growth. This means less jobs, less industry leading in a global context and a further decrease in stature for America’s economy. This will be devastating, especially during these times. We need *more* faith in our markets, not less. We need *more* money being put into our markets, not less. You have not thought this out, and Obama does not care. He himself said he’s concerned not with capital gains tax revenue, which is what a Democrat would care about, but “fairness”. This was one of the early warning signs that many people missed.

I’m sorry, but you are being misled. In this country paying excessive taxes is not a patriotic duty. That is just ridiculous. Paying taxes is necessary, I believe in it and I adhere to the tax code. Paying them by law is patriotic because obeying the law is patriotic. But seeking and wanting to pay excessive taxes for the purpose of wealth distribution will never be considered patriotic in this country, no matter what BS comes out of Joe Biden’s mouth.

As for being as good as the most successful European governments, again you make me laugh. We in America are a country many times the size of Europe, with a higher birthrate. And we have responsibilities to countries well beyond those that make up Europe. Europe sits back and relaxes while we take care of business. Europe acts disgusted with our display of force, while they themselves have been the cause of most of the world’s worst wars, and even the completely eff’ed up map in the Middle East. America is not perfect, we have had our share of major screw ups in all categories. But to think that a socialist system as created in Europe or any other place in the world would work in this country is simply a pipe dream. It will fail on its own lack of merits and it will fail further due to the fact that most people in this country will reject it once they see what’s in store for them.

You think the economy is only bad here? Europe is facing some very hard times, so is Russia, which is a kleptocracy pretending to be a capitalist society. You think our markets had tough times recently? Tell me, how many times has any North American based stock exchange (of which there are dozens) had to shut down in the middle of the trading day this year? Oh right, zero. How many times has Russia had to suspend trading in the past 6 weeks? Too many.

I’m sorry you didn’t better understand the background of this country before coming here, because maybe you would not be so disappointed that most of us here completely reject the tripe that people like Obama are trying to peddle.

There are plenty of socialist countries in the world. There is only one America, and we ought to keep it that way. Step back, re-think things. I know that you have a good heart Cretin. You are a good person, I believe that. But you are terribly, terribly wrong about what direction this country should take.

You need to spend less time reading the carefully crafted propaganda tombs of a Jr. Senator from Chicago and spend more time reading up on your American history. Did you come this far to swallow hook, line and sinker the entire narrative of our media and the Democratic party? I certainly hope not.