Barack to the right

[Anonymous]

Amen PP---Clinton tends to try to take credit for conservative policies. Again, if you are someone who has worked hard to create or try to create wealth for your family--there is no way you would want Obama for economic gains--you will only be paying for the rest of the country. But a lot of people on this board are in governmental positions that may not be on the books lucrative but have great benefits including job for life so they are more than happy to see others pay more. It is also their choice to pursue careers where you don't have as much control on salary. Also, people who do not own businesses so have no real understanding what it is like to actually have to worry how you are going to pay people week to week also have no concept--higher taxes will hurt everyone.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Amen PP---Clinton tends to try to take credit for conservative policies. Again, if you are someone who has worked hard to create or try to create wealth for your family--there is no way you would want Obama for economic gains--you will only be paying for the rest of the country. But a lot of people on this board are in governmental positions that may not be on the books lucrative but have great benefits including job for life so they are more than happy to see others pay more. It is also their choice to pursue careers where you don't have as much control on salary. Also, people who do not own businesses so have no real understanding what it is like to actually have to worry how you are going to pay people week to week also have no concept--higher taxes will hurt everyone.

I have to say that your attitude that only the wealthy are hard workers is getting old. There are people who work very hard every day of their lives and are still caught in the lower socio-economic categories. There are people like school teachers, fireman, and even the enlisted military whose jobs provide great benefit to society, but provide modest salaries. It they took your advice and only pursued high-paying jobs, we be in big trouble. These people were ignored by Bush (who only grudgingly agreed to sign the new GI bill after opposing it every step of the way). Obama will give them the tax breaks that Republicans only bestowed upon the rich. I know the Republican mantra that the poor will only waste any extra money they get whereas the rich will invest theirs. Yeah, buying a little extra food or gas for the car is a real waste and it would be better for Paris Hilton to buy a new purse.

If Republicans are so good at running an economy, why are they constantly putting us so deeply in debt? Reagan's economic plan was the so-called "Rosy Scenario" that resulted in such high debt that he eventually had to reverse course. GWB is just not smart enough to recognize failure and prefers to double down, so he turned the largest surplus we ever had into the largest deficit we ever had. Here is a guy that ruined one business after another -- getting bailed out by Daddy's friends, bought a baseball team and traded away Sammy Sousa, and has now put his reverse Midas touch on the US Government. With that track record, I'm really not prepared to listen to lectures from right-wingers about how how create Conservatives are at economics.

[Anonymous]

His latest shift: welfare reform. Interesting to note how he criticized Clinton for enacting it.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/06/obama-shifts-on.html

[Anonymous]

I have never said that only the wealthy are hardworking but the wealthy tend to work smart and make sure they are creating revenue..but since you brought up teachers--again they have a job for life, set hours (your choice whether to stay later), paid grad school (for most contracts), excellent healthcare which for most districts includes extensive fertility assistance and three months off a year where they can pursue other job options (and many do and in fact become business owners). There is nothing wrong with this but it's a choice and market dictates their salary. If we had a shortage of teachers as we have had various times in society-their starting pay goes up and contracts as renogtiated reflect the trends. Teaching is an honorable profession but..you don't go into teaching because you are planning to use that as your sole vehicle to build wealth. I do know quite a few successful teachers who have built wealth by starting side businesses and they tend to not want to give all they acumulated away--and I don't blame them.

Building wealth is somthing that is starting to take on a bad connotation in this country and that is sad because it's not what our country was built on. Our forefathers came here with dreams of building something and were the earliest businessmen/women--some of the people that have built the largest amount of wealth were people who started with nothing but moved ahead because they not only worked hard but worked smart. Time and time again people miss that if you are depending on building your future on the government giving you a handout--or thinking you will get ahead by taking money from people who legitimately earned it, you will never be wealthy--the government is absolutelly the worst tranferer of wealth. So this arguement is about using your brain. Take time and talk to people who earn a lot of money as there are lessons to be learned--I know I have and it has been helpful. I don't know a single person who is financially successful who has said-you know I am successful because the government gave me xxx and yy --it just doesn't make financial sense. Now if you want to go on another topic about reproductive rights, the environment and the war--this is a whole other bag of wax that may be important enough to you to throw away economic good sense. Also--deficits and surpluses are temporaty fincial models and many economists today are devaluing their importance--in the end it is about asking a very small group of people to pay for a very large group of people and that just won't work. FYI I am someone who started in an economically challenged family so no silver spoons here.

[Anonymous]

PP again--sorry for any typos but I have to finish my "real" work and don't have time to edit

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:His latest shift: welfare reform. Interesting to note how he criticized Clinton for enacting it.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/06/obama-shifts-on.html

Both you and ABC are reaching a bit here. Obama has always supported welfare reform -- it was one of his major accomplishments in the Illinois Senate. The 1996 bill that Clinton signed came out of a Republican-controlled Congress and a lot of Democrats didn't support it. Even Clinton said it wasn't perfect. Obama didn't criticize Clinton for enacting it, but simply said that he probably wouldn't have supported it.

McCain is flip flopping all over the place but the media has a love affair with him and won't point it out. On the other hand, some members of the media want to relive the John Kerry experience and paint Obama as a flip flopper. I'd like to know where the idea of the "liberal media" came from.

[Anonymous]

I think the media and the public are more critical of Barack's flip-flopping because he is running on a platform for change. And we are perhaps holding him to a higher standard because of it. You can't be a proponent for change and then play the same of political games. We fully expect McCain to pander for votes. We maybe didn't expect it from Obama.

[Anonymous]

Again, if you are someone who has worked hard to create or try to create wealth for your family--there is no way you would want Obama for economic gains--you will only be paying for the rest of the country.

I'm not sure what information you are looking at, but the biggest federal expenditures at this point aren't going for "paying the rest of the country". They are paying for a war that could cost $2.7 trillion in the end. Why are you complaining about domestic (presumably welfare) expenditures? That is sort of ignoring the 2,000 pound elephant in the room (or however that saying goes).

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:His latest shift: welfare reform. Interesting to note how he criticized Clinton for enacting it.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/06/obama-shifts-on.html

Both you and ABC are reaching a bit here. Obama has always supported welfare reform -- it was one of his major accomplishments in the Illinois Senate. The 1996 bill that Clinton signed came out of a Republican-controlled Congress and a lot of Democrats didn't support it. Even Clinton said it wasn't perfect. Obama didn't criticize Clinton for enacting it, but simply said that he probably wouldn't have supported it.

McCain is flip flopping all over the place but the media has a love affair with him and won't point it out. On the other hand, some members of the media want to relive the John Kerry experience and paint Obama as a flip flopper. I'd like to know where the idea of the "liberal media" came from.

Jeff, come on. I'm a liberal and I will readily admit there are dozens of studies confirming the liberal bias in the media. Your statement is like professors, of which I am one, wondering where the idea of the "liberal professoriat" came from. While the most obvious examples are those such as MSNBC's content, which is essentially nothing more than liberal rants by the likes of Keith Olbermann (who has no journalism credentials anyway), no one really doubts the bias in both print and broadcast journalism.

Howard Kurtz, in today's Post, says of Obama's support of welfare reform: "While Obama sponsored or co-sponsored measures involving welfare, health care and tax cuts in the Illinois legislature, to say he "passed" the laws, as if he were in a leadership post, overstates his role." As far as a "major accomplishment" goes, Obama simply co-sponsored the bill in the Illinois legislature. He was one of five co-sponsors in the state senate. The bill was known as "The Edgar Plan" for the Republican governor, Jim Edgar. Obama is overstating his accomplishments while having his surrogates carry out what are clearly orchestrated attacks on McCain's military service. It's a very risky strategy.

[Anonymous]

17:41 here. I shouldn't have said "dozens of studies," but rather "a number of studies." The extant studies look at both the content of media and at the self identification of journalists, but there are not "dozens" of them. Sorry for the overstatement; I merged these thoughts with some writing I'm doing for work and it came out wrong here!

[Anonymous]

Jeff, come on. I'm a liberal and I will readily admit there are dozens of studies confirming the liberal bias in the media. Your statement is like professors, of which I am one, wondering where the idea of the "liberal professoriat" came from. While the most obvious examples are those such as MSNBC's content, which is essentially nothing more than liberal rants by the likes of Keith Olbermann (who has no journalism credentials anyway), no one really doubts the bias in both print and broadcast journalism.

There are also a lot of weaknesses of the studies "confirming" liberal bias in the media, and a lot of studies showing that often the politics of media managers and the need for media organizations to operate as commercial enterprises often counter-act whatever liberal leanings journalists may have (and studies such as the Pew Trust one that is often cited to point to the liberal political preferences of journalists haven't actually established the link that it creeps into their work). I am not saying the media is perfect, but I do think they have a hell of a self-correcting mechanism. So, I don't think your conclusion that no one really doubts the bias is just not true. In fact, there are many

I also think for every example like Keith Olbermann, there is a Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
Howard Kurtz, in today's Post, says of Obama's support of welfare reform: "While Obama sponsored or co-sponsored measures involving welfare, health care and tax cuts in the Illinois legislature, to say he "passed" the laws, as if he were in a leadership post, overstates his role." As far as a "major accomplishment" goes, Obama simply co-sponsored the bill in the Illinois legislature. He was one of five co-sponsors in the state senate. The bill was known as "The Edgar Plan" for the Republican governor, Jim Edgar. Obama is overstating his accomplishments while having his surrogates carry out what are clearly orchestrated attacks on McCain's military service. It's a very risky strategy.

Howard Kurtz is probably one of the best examples of my point. This guy never misses an opportunity to bash Democrats and is well known for his love of the boys at PowerLine. So, its probably no surprise that he spins negatively regarding Obama.

If Obama was one of five senators who co-sponsored a bill, I don't know how you could argue that he was not a leader. Co-sponsors help garner support and often lobby their colleagues in favor of the legislation. As a Democratic Senator, his support for a bill put forth by a Republican governor was crucial. Moreover, he negotiated changes to make the legislation more acceptable to Democrats. Other "fact checkers" have found Obama's claim to be true. For example:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/538/

Both Kurtz and ABC are unfairly treating this as a flip flop. Its not one.

Above someone wrote that we expect more from Obama. That's true. But don't blame him for flip flops he doesn't make.

[jsteele]

Another example from the "liberal" Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/01/AR2008070103008.html

The headline claims "Obama Got Discount on Home Loan", but reading the article reveals that Obama obtained a mortgage at 30 year fixed rate of 5.625 percent in 2005. According to the article, the average for similar loans was 5.93 percent. We are talking about a difference of .305 percent. That doesn't sound like a discount to me. That sounds simply like a below average rate and -- for the benefit of an apparently math challenged Joe Stephens -- averages are derived from lower and higher values. It is likely that other borrowers obtained rates similar to Obama's and maybe even lower. Of course, some who probably had less stellar credit ratings got higher rates. That's how the system works. There is no story here and the Post is simply creating hype out of nothing.

This is the same newspaper that ran a front page story about rumors that Obama was a Muslim without ever indicating that the rumors were false.

[Anonymous]

Jeff, you have an absolutely blind allegiance to Barack Obama. Believe whatever you like.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Jeff, you have an absolutely blind allegiance to Barack Obama. Believe whatever you like.

Why don't you point out what is factually wrong with my statement? Otherwise, I have to assume the blindness is on your part.