National

those who proclaim themselves Christian or even many secular supporters of BO have not read his "plan for change" on his web site. They have not taken the time to actually find out what this guy wants to do to the US.
If you read it and then go and read Karl Marx's Manifesto, it will scare the pants off of you if you are not a hard core socialist/communist. BO completely disregards the Constitution and has incredibly strong Marxist leanings.

Although it would interesting to watch, I doubt Obama is so Christian that he would try this:

Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need.

And Ron...

The lack of criminal immunity is worthless so long as Bush can pardon those responsible prior to leaving office.

Reagan did it with the Iran-Contra guys. Bush will do it with the telecoms.

Bush won. Obama blew it.

Obama is better than McCain, but on this issue he blundered big time.

Voter Registrations in Florida Show "Huge Swing" Toward Democrats

Saturday 12 July 2008

by: Anthony Man, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

High Democratic registration in Broward County could help Barack Obama.

GOP is way behind in Florida registrations.

An escalating number of voters registering as Democrats is providing evidence that the 2008 election could produce a wave of support for Barack Obama - and trigger a decades-long shift of party allegiance that could affect elections for a generation.

The numbers are ominous for Republicans: Through May, Democratic voter registration in Broward County was up 6.7 percent. Republican registrations grew just 3 percent while independents rose 2.8 percent.

Democrats have posted even greater gains statewide, up 106,508 voters from January through May, compared with 16,686 for the Republicans.

"It's a huge swing," says Marian Johnson, political director for the Florida Chamber of Commerce. "I looked at that and said, 'Wow.'"

Democrats said Friday it's proof of what they have been seeing for months.

"Who would want to join a failed party? And that's what the Republican Party is today, a failed party," said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D- Delray Beach, co-chairman of Obama's Florida campaign.

Broward Democratic Chairman Mitch Ceasar credits President Bush for increasing Democratic numbers. "The Democratic brand has cycled back."

The registration numbers could provide a jolt to Republicans and invigorate their efforts.

State Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R- Fort Lauderdale, was blunt: Republicans need to do a better job.

The registration numbers "got my attention; I'll be calling our party chairman this afternoon," she said.

Nicol C. Rae, a political science professor at Florida International University, cautioned against reading too much into the voter registration trends before the vice presidential nominees have been chosen, before the parties have their conventions and before people begin to sharpen their focus after Labor Day.

"It's still a fluid race in a lot of ways," he said.

Acknowledging it's a "tough climate," Cindy Guerra said John McCain supporters shouldn't despair.

"At the end of the day people will wake up and say, 'Gosh, you know what? I would not have open-heart surgery with an intern at a hospital. I would really want that doctor who's been there and has the experience,'" said Guerra, vice chairwoman of the Broward Republican Party.

Still, the long-term implications are potentially significant.

In the 1980s, charismatic and popular President Reagan helped bring a generation of voters into the Republican Party, where they stayed for years, affecting the balance of power in Congress and in state governments.

Wexler sees Obama repeating the same thing today with first-time voters such as Jonathan Caprio - who registered to vote Friday at Southwest Regional Library in Pembroke Pines - joining the Democratic Party.

"I'm excited to vote for whoever is running for the Democrats," he said. "I don't have much of a choice. I don't really like the other party."

Michael Martinez, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, said there aren't many people shifting from the Republicans to the Democrats. But the allegiance of first-time voters is significant.

"New voters tend to identify with the hot party at the time. In the 1980s, a lot of new voters were identifying with Reagan, because he was sort of the hot commodity," Martinez said.

Staff Writer Kevin Clark and Aaron Deslatte of the Tallahassee Bureau contributed to this report.

By Thomas Sowell : In an election campaign in which not only young liberals, but also some people who are neither young nor liberals, seem absolutely mesmerized by the skilled rhetoric of Barack Obama, facts have receded even further into the background than usual.

As the hypnotic mantra of "change" is repeated endlessly, few people even raise the question of whether what few specifics we hear represent any real change, much less a change for the better.

Raising taxes, increasing government spending and demonizing business? That is straight out of the New Deal of the 1930s.

The New Deal was new then but it is not new now. Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression.

Putting new restrictions of international trade, in order to save American jobs? That was done by Herbert Hoover, when he signed the Hawley-Smoot tariff when the unemployment rate was 9 percent. The next year the unemployment rate was 16 percent and, before the Great Depression was over, unemployment hit 25 percent.

One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country's problems, just because they say so-- or say so loudly or inspiringly.

Politicians' top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected.

Some of his more trusting followers are belatedly discovering that, as he "refines" his position on various issues, now that he has gotten their votes in the Democratic primaries and needs the votes of others in the coming general election.

Perhaps a defining moment in showing Senator Obama's priorities was his declaring, in answer to a question from Charles Gibson, that he was for raising the capital gains tax rate. When Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved.

The question of how to raise more revenue may be the economic issue but the political issue is whether socking it to "the rich" in the name of "fairness" gains more votes.

Since about half the people in the United States own stocks-- either directly or because their pension funds buy stocks-- socking it to people who earn capital gains is by no means socking it just to "the rich." But, again, that is one of the many facts that don't matter politically.

What matters politically is the image of coming out on the side of "the people" against "the privileged."

If you are a nurse or mechanic who will be depending on your pension to take care of you when you retire-- as Social Security is unlikely to do-- you may not think of yourself as one of the privileged. But unless you connect the dots between capital gains tax rates and your retirement income, you may fall under the spell of the well-honed Obama rhetoric.

Obama is for higher minimum wage rates. Does anyone care what actually happens in countries with higher minimum wage rates? Of course not.

Economists may point to studies done in countries around the world, showing that higher minimum wage rates usually mean higher unemployment rates among lower skilled and less experienced workers.

That's their problem. A politician's problem is how to look like he is for "the poor" and against those who are "exploiting" them. The facts are irrelevant to maintaining that political image.

Nowhere do facts matter less than in foreign policy issues. Nothing is more popular than the notion that you can deal with dangers from other nations by talking with their leaders.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain became enormously popular in the 1930s by sitting down and talking with Hitler, and announcing that their agreement had produced "peace in our time"-- just one year before the most catastrophic war in history began.

Senator Obama may gain similar popularity by advocating similar policies today-- and his political popularity is what it's all about. The consequences for the country come later.

That's the fact, Jack!

Drilling Without Oil, Tax Cuts Without Growth

Tuesday 15 July 2008

by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

McCain proposed offshore drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, attempting to show he cares about lowering gas prices for everyday Americans. Despite the inability of this drilling to lower gas prices anytime soon, the media picked up on his posturing and promoted it, rather than offering a critique.

Senator McCain is in the unenviable position of running on the track record of a president with the worst economic performance since Herbert Hoover. He has adopted the strategy of ignoring the record while embracing his predecessor's policies. McCain is betting the media will be so incompetent that they will not notice. He might be right. The basic story here is very simple. The centerpiece of Senator McCain's economic agenda is the continuation of the Bush tax cuts. Of course, he has tossed out a few other items, but impact of his other proposals, such as ending earmarks, is trivial. For all practical purposes, McCain's economic agenda is Bush's tax cuts.

We could have an interesting debate about whether giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country is good economic policy, if we didn't already know the answer. We have had almost eight years of President Bush's tax cuts and the record is as clear as it can possibly be. When it comes to producing economic growth that benefits the middle class, the tax cuts were dismal failures.

The economy is now in the process of sinking into the second recession of the second Bush administration, and President Bush already has the worst record on job creation of any president since Herbert Hoover. At the current rate of job loss, it is entirely possible President Bush will have created fewer private sector jobs in his entire eight years in office than the 2.6 million annual average for the eight years of the Clinton administration.

It is virtually certain the wage for the typical worker will be lower when President Bush leaves office in January of 2009 than when he took office in January of 2001. This means most workers will have seen nothing from the benefits of productivity growth over the last eight years.

Certainly, President Bush cannot be blamed for everything that went wrong, but it certainly does not make sense to claim that his policies bear no responsibility for this economic failure. President Bush was left in charge of the store (he also controlled both houses of Congress through most of his presidency) and we got cleaned out. Imagine if some big government Democrat had this track record?

This is why it is absurd for McCain to present himself as the candidate of jobs and growth. We are doing his policies now - they don't work.

McCain should be embarrassed to be pushing these policies, given the huge transparent failure that is sitting in front of our face, but he is counting on the media to turn the issue into a he said, she said. McCain is betting the media will treat the failure of the Bush-McCain economic policy as a matter of partisan contention, rather than a fact, like gravity.

Thus far, he has been right. He did a test run of media gullibility a couple of weeks ago when he proposed drilling for oil offshore in environmentally sensitive areas. He proposed this as a response to $4 a gallon of gas. This was Senator McCain's way of showing he cares for the working stiff.

Of course, Senator McCain knows the amount of oil potentially available offshore in environmentally sensitive areas is too small to have a noticeable impact on prices and that it will take a decade before we even see a drop. But, he wanted the media frame of being the guy who was willing to sacrifice the environment in order to help Joe Six-Pack.

It worked like a charm. The media contrasted Obama's concern with the environment (out-of-touch elitist) with McCain's concern for jobs and growth.

If McCain could look good proposing a policy that jeopardizes the environment for no visible economic benefit, why not push an economic policy that is a proven failure as though the past eight years never happened? As P.T. Barnum should have said, "no one ever lost an election underestimating the gullibility of the US media."

And here's some real facts, Jill

Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression.

Yes, there used to be exactly four ecnomists and three historians that concluded this. Now it is up to almost a dozen people. (Almost as numerous as the scientists who doubt global warming.)

More tax and borrow from the Repugs will increase the debt, create more interest owed to the Chinese, Japanese, Saudis and what do we get for that new tax on the American public, nothing, nada, zilch. IF YOU WANT MORE OF THE SAME VOTE MC CAIN. VOTE FOR THE REAGAN/BUSH/CHENEY/ROVE/MC CAIN TICKET AND YOU GOT IT.

The Real Legacy of the ‘Reagan Revolution’
Posted on July 15, 2008

By Robert Scheer

McCain campaign co-chair Phil Gramm is right: We have “become a nation of whiners.” But who is whining more than the bankers that former Sen. Gramm’s financial deregulation legislation benefited? The very bankers who now expect a government bailout, such as those at UBS Investment Bank, where Gramm found lucrative employment.

As chair of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, Gramm engineered passage of legislation that effectively ended the major regulatory restraints applied to the financial industry in response to the Great Depression. The purpose of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act—co-authored by Gramm, passed in 1999 by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton—was to liberate the banks, stockbrokers and insurance companies from restraints imposed on their activities more than seven decades ago. It was legislation that the financial community, which contributed heavily to Gramm’s campaigns in the previous five years, desperately wanted and obviously has abused. So why now bail these institutions out?

Hows about some “tough love” for those bankers suddenly in trouble? You know, the sink-or-swim approach of “welfare reform” that Gramm and Clinton applied to poor people to end their addiction to government handouts. Or, perhaps a heavy dose of “faith-based” personal responsibility initiatives to get those knaves who messed up our entire housing market back on the straight and narrow. Sounds ridiculous I know, because nothing but the bleeding-heart, big-government, throw-money-at-the-problem approach will do when it comes to salvaging corrupt corporations.

That is the real legacy of what has been ballyhooed as the “Reagan Revolution,” which Clinton went along with, but which found its full flowering in the administration of George W. Bush. The bookends of the Bush years are the Enron debacle and the federal bailout of bankers drunk on their own greed. And no two people in this country are more responsible for enabling this sordid behavior than the power couple Phil and Wendy Gramm.

Enron, lest we forget, was their baby. Then-Sen. Gramm sponsored the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which allowed Enron’s scamming to happen. As Ken Lay, who was chair of Gramm’s election finance committee, put it quite candidly when asked for the secret of Enron’s success, “basically, we are entering or in markets that are deregulating or have recently deregulated.”

Part of that deregulation involved rulings of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, then chaired by Wendy Gramm, who upon retiring from that post became a highly compensated member of the Enron board of directors, serving for eight years. She even was on the board’s audit committee during the time of the corporation’s despicable financial shenanigans. While on the Enron board, Wendy Gramm also chaired an anti-regulatory think tank that received funding from Enron and other corporations that benefited directly from the policies her institute espoused.

My point here is not to expose the dubious ethics of the Gramms’ various business ventures but rather to question why Sen. John McCain turned to Phil Gramm for leadership in his presidential campaign. Indeed, until his verbal gaffe, Gramm was highly visible and rumored to be the choice for secretary of the treasury should McCain win.

McCain has long promised voters that he learned the hard lessons provided by his being one of the infamous Keating Five in the nefarious savings and loan scandal that cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet he chose as his campaign co-chair a former senator whose push for government deregulation facilitated the far deeper scandal we now are experiencing. Here is a man whose legislation created what financial guru Warren Buffett termed “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

Why in the world would you designate as your key economic adviser someone who left the Senate to become an officer of the bank that is at the very center of this mess, a former senator who not only secured highly paid employment with a banking giant that benefited from legislation he helped pass, but who then lobbied Congress for even more of the deregulatory breaks that got the bank into such deep trouble?

The answer cannot simply be that McCain doesn’t care much about economics, as he himself has indicated. Perhaps that would explain his having voted for all of the measures pushed through the Senate by Gramm. Perhaps it even would explain McCain’s having been chair of Gramm’s own failed presidential bid. But indifference to economics does not explain the prominence of Gramm in the McCain campaign as the top economic adviser during these past months of the U.S. financial crisis. Indifference to the folks losing their homes is a more plausible explanation.

Robert Scheer is the author, most recently, of “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America,”