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John McCain and Barack Obama on Whether to Spread the Wealth
Tweet Share on Facebook October 22, 2008 Comment (38)John McCain has been campaigning against Barack Obama's comment about "spreading the wealth" around, drawing anti-Obama boos from his supporters. Here's my question: Does McCain then favor great concentrations of wealth? (Given his against-it-before-he-was-for-it support of tax cuts for the wealthy, the answer is presumably...yes.)
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Sarah Palin's Un-Real America
Tweet Share on Facebook October 22, 2008 Comment (30)On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, my dad, an Army captain, was in uniform and at Sunday mass. It was a fine, quiet morning on the island of Oahu.
At first, when the floor began to tremble and the explosions rumbled over the island from the bombs going off at Pearl Harbor, he and most of the congregation thought it was Navy target practice. Then they madly scrambled for their guns.
Dad fought with the armies of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, through New Guinea and the Philippines. He wore his country's uniform proudly for six years and didn't make it home, for good, until 1945. When he died, a few years ago, the American flag was draped upon his casket.
He is not here to do it, so allow me to refute the suggestion made by the McCain campaign and its surrogates that the Farrells, and Americans like us, are "anti-American" or not from the "real America" or "Communists" because we don't come from the mythical small town of Palinville, where good Christian families, who do the work and fight our country's wars, vote only for white Republicans.
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The Right Message for John McCain and Barack Obama on Illegal Immigration: 'Go Home!'
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2008 Comment (51)News stories such as this one make me spiral off into outer space. The premise is that the presidential candidates should "talk to" illegal immigrants—or, excuse me, undocumented workers. One is deemed politically incorrect, insensitive, and—dare I say it—"racist" for referring to people who either enter this country illegally or stay beyond their legal visa periods as lawbreakers. Yet "illegals" are exactly what and who they are. In politically correct circles, however, they are "undocumented workers." That despite the fact there are no data to prove that all of them are working.
Here's the story from Long Island's Newsday newspaper:
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Barack Obama's $150 Million September Put Into Perspective
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2008 Comment (8)Let's pause a moment and put Barack Obama's $150 million September into perspective.
Over in Data Points today (in the center column of U.S. News's Opinion page), we've got some comparative figures. John Kerry spent $310 million in the 2004 election, for example, or about twice as much as Obama raised last month. George W. Bush and Al Gore combined to spend almost $240 million in 2000. And they were big spenders: Bill Clinton and Bob Dole (or as I like to call him, John McCain version 1.0) combined for $239.9 million in 1996.
If you really want to get weirded out, consider that Obama raised more in September than Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale spent all told in 1984 ($103.6 million) and roughly as much as Jimmy Carter (two runs), Reagan, and Gerald Ford spent in the 1976 and 1980 presidential campaigns combined.
The mind reels.
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Sarah Palin's Nutty Creationism
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2008 Comment (29)Famed curmudgeon Christopher Hitchens confesses that, in his never-ending quest as a contrarian, he misjudged Sarah Palin when "rather feebly" giving her the benefit of a doubt last summer.
Writing for Slate, the repentant Hitchens is now urging his media brethren to boycott coverage of Palin in the final days of the 2008 campaign until she agrees to hold a full-scale press conference.
It is a provocative, albeit fantastical, suggestion. The political press corps couldn't organize a well-run baby shower, much less a boycott of a national political figure.
Still, I particularly like his dissection of Palin's stance on the wisdom of teaching creationism alongside evolution in the schools.
I've touched on the Fred-Flintstone-was-alive-at-the-same-time-as-dino issue before. Here is the Hitchens take:
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Governors in a Tough Position With Shrinking Revenue
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2008 Comment (7)The Cato Institute's annual fiscal report card on the nations' governors is out, and it presents a discouraging picture. Here are the conclusions of Cato's Chris Edwards:
[T]here has been a disappointing lack of major spending reforms among governors of both parties in recent years. State tax policies have also been uninspiring. Most tax cuts pursued by the governors have been small and targeted breaks, not broad-based rate cuts that can foster economic growth.
Fiscal policies need to be improved if the states are to meet the huge challenges ahead. Medicaid costs continue to rise, state debt is soaring, and the pension and health care plans of state workers have huge funding gaps. At the same time, rising international tax competition makes it imperative that states cut tax rates to attract jobs and investment. Governors don't have an easy job, but they do need to pursue more aggressive fiscal reforms to meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive economy.
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Despite Sympathy for Barack Obama's Grandmother, He's Still Wrong on Wright
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2008 Comment (167)I like some things about Barack Obama's grandmother, the one he's jumped off the campaign trail to visit because she is ailing. Madelyn Dunham, now 85, was a trailblazer for women's rights and a woman ahead of her time, according to the Honolulu Advertiser:
While Obama's views on race relations in America were being shaped, his maternal grandmother—Madelyn Dunham, now 85—received a series of promotions at Hawaii's top bank. And in December 1970, she was named one of the first two female vice presidents at the Bank of Hawaii.
Obama's grandparents were integrally involved in raising him. But Obama also used his grandmother to defend his too-long membership in the anti-American church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and that is wrong:
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Obama's Biden Burden: Joe Tests Barack With Foreign Policy Comment
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2008 Comment (52)Has anyone seen Joe Biden today? Last seen he was being bound and gagged by senior Obama campaign aides and whisked to a secure (from the press), undisclosed location.
In case you missed it (and no one within earshot of John McCain's presidential campaign has missed it), Biden committed the blunder of candidness while speaking about the challenges awaiting a newly inaugurated President Obama.
This will provide a good test of my theory regarding vice presidential candidates: They don't matter.
From ABC News:
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Economic Trends and Projecting the Outcome of McCain vs. Obama
Tweet Share on Facebook October 21, 2008 Comment (101)A trio of excellent articles on the financial crisis from the Washington Post's Outlook section Sunday. Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist, explains why the crisis won't result in a larger public sector. The Post's Greg Ip on why the steps the government has taken so far are not so radical, at least as compared with some alternative steps taken elsewhere. Joel Kotkin on how we are more likely to build stronger local ties and local communities in the coming years. The Outlook section also had an article, with good graphics, on election projections based on economic trends. But curiously, the article and graphics don't include the 2000 election when, as I recall, such projections said that Al Gore would get as much as 56 percent of the vote. Gore—and George W. Bush—ended up with 48 percent.
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North Korea and the Farce of the State Department Terror List
Tweet Share on Facebook October 20, 2008 Comment (12)What will be the fate of the Bush administration's deal with North Korea? One victim will be the false notion of paper containment when the hermit kingdom surely cheats on the arrangement. Another more satisfying victim will be the "pragmatists" who, despite common sense and history, championed the deal. More immediately, however, there is State's "terror list" itself, which by North Korea's removal is revealed as a joke.
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