3 posts tagged “election 2008”

Jon Taplin pointed his readers to Bill Gross's June 2008 Investment Outlook. This quote calls out the American people and our presidential contenders for fooling ourselves.

What this country needs is either a good 5¢ cigar or the reincarnation of an Illinois “rail-splitter” willing to tell the American people “what up” – “what really up.” We have for so long now been willing to be entertained rather than informed, that we more or less accept majority opinion, perpetually shaped by ratings obsessed media, at face value. After 12 months of an endless primary campaign barrage, for instance, most of us believe that a candidate’s preacher – Democrat orRepublican – should be a significant factor in how we vote. We care more about who’s going to be eliminated from this week’s American Idol than the deteriorating quality of our healthcare system. Alternative energy discussion takes a bleacher’s seat to the latest foibles of Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears and then we wonder why gas is four bucks a gallon. We care as much as we always have – we just care about the wrong things: entertainment, as opposed to informed choices; trivia vs. hardcore ideological debate.

It’s Sunday afternoon at the Coliseum folks, and all good fun, but the hordes are crossing the Alps and headed for modern day Rome – better educated, harder working, and willing to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. Can it be any wonder that an estimated 1% of America’s wealth migrates into foreign hands every year? We, as a people, are overweight, poorly educated, overindulged, and imbued with such a sense of self importance on a geopolitical scale, that our allies are dropping like flies. “Yes we can?” Well, if so, then the “we” is the critical element, not the leader that will be chosen in November. Let’s get off the couch and shape up – physically, intellectually, and institutionally – and begin to make some informed choices about our future. Lincoln didn’t say it, but might have agreed, that the worst part about being fooled is fooling yourself, and as a nation, we’ve been doing a pretty good job of that for a long time now.

Looking forward, Barack can win both Wyoming and Mississippi this week. Then he has a four week battle to take it to Clinton, Inc. in Pennsylvania. He has to prove to his supporters that he can throw a punch just as much as he can take Hillary’s below the belt hits. We’re not voting for Gandhi here.--Jon Taplin, March 3, 2008.

Had Bush not waged a nasty smear campaign against McCain in South Carolina, McCain would have gotten my vote for President in 2000. Back then Al Gore seemed boring to me, and sadly that was as deep as my political knowledge went. I didn't know who George W. Bush was, but I had heard a lot about McCain. He was a Republican but seemed moderate enough for my liking.

Now however I know a lot more about John McCain. He sides on the Democratic side of many points. He is a moderate conservative by most measures and his party is afraid of him because of it. But don't be fooled. McCain is not a Democrat in hiding. When it comes to war he may be even crazier than the rest of his party.

Bombing Soviet ships, of course, would probably have started World War III, but McCain's vision, then and now, encompasses war as a way of life. There is significant evidence that McCain believes war is something righteous and necessary, a tonic for the national soul, intrinsically "noble" irrespective of context (he is still one of the only politicians to apply that word to the Iraq conflict). That is why it's no joke when McCain says casually, "There's gonna be other wars," or when he sings, "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." We have to assume that he will jump at the chance to expand this conflict and hit those politically sensitive targets his "complete idiot" civilian commanders once barred him from going after in Vietnam.--(emphasis mine) Rolling Stone, March 6, 2008.

Onward to Victory is a key element of the McCain platform. He refused to back down on the idea that the surge was working for so long, that for a moment McCain seemed like he'd been right all along. This is not the case. The "surge" has failed.

On the surface Iraq is calm. (The lyric "Calm like a bomb" comes to mind.) The way the United States has achieved this calmness is very much like lighting a slow-burning fuse to a massive powder keg and hoping someone else comes along and extinguishes the flame before everything is blown to bits.

Now, in the midst of the surge, the Bush administration has done an about-face. Having lost the civil war, many Sunnis were suddenly desperate to switch sides — and Gen. David Petraeus was eager to oblige. The U.S. has not only added 30,000 more troops in Iraq — it has essentially bribed the opposition, arming the very Sunni militants who only months ago were waging deadly assaults on American forces. To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias, which now operate beyond the control of Iraq's central government. The Americans call the units by a variety of euphemisms: Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias prefer a simpler and more dramatic name: They call themselves Sahwa, or "the Awakening." -- Rolling Stone, March 6, 2008.

By continuing to insist that the "surge," of which buying the loyalty of former enemies is a large part, is working McCain is showing is true conservative side.

If you're planning on voting for Hilary, but not Obama. Or Obama but not Hilary, please consider the alternative.