<p>“Fiscally Conservative” doesn’t mean you never spend ANY $$ on ANYTHING.</p>
<p>Some expenditures are necessary, especially when they involve upholding the U.S. Constitution - namely, “providing for the common defense”.</p>
<p>bz2010: No argument. But be honest and raise taxes to pay for your expenses. Don’t cut taxes and pass the bill onto the next generation. The decades-long fiscal hypocrisy of the republican party has grown to epic proportions.</p>
<p>It’s not a coincidence that the good and honorable Rev. Wright is no where to be found to respond . Could it be his answers might cause even more problems ummm?</p>
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<p>BOTH parties deserve blame for the deficit. Democrats traditionally seek to include more government intervention & bureaucracy which costs $$, but any legislator who has introduced earmarks & pork projects, or included other needless spending into the federal budget bears responsibility for the situiation we’re in now.</p>
<p>“BOTH parties deserve blame for the deficit.”</p>
<p>This is the first time the executive branch pursuing a war refused to increase taxes to pay for it. Democrats have already tried to raise taxes, blocked by the President and his party. Yes, I would vote to raise my own taxes as preferable to passing the debt on to my children and future generations.</p>
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<p>The difference is that the Republicans act as if they are the most miserly people on the planet, while that is no more than incrementally more true of them than of the Democrats.</p>
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<p>So basically we’re back to “I think he spends money on good things and so can call him a fiscal conservative, and I don’t like what the Democrats spend on and so won’t call them that”. Which is what I’ve been saying from the start, and you’ve been running from, because basing such an appellation on nothing more than pure opinion isn’t as neat and pretty as it is on facts.</p>
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<p>I know plenty of people who fit that description, but that sure as hell doesn’t qualify them for the presidency. Even if I didn’t hate his socialist agenda and liberal policies, I would be put off by the fact that the junior senator from anywhere would presume to try to run for president. Someone whose national government experience began only 3 years ago should not be running for president.</p>
<p>Get some experience, then get back to me…</p>
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<p>Don’t put words in my mouth. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I didn’t render an opinion, I quoted the Constitution.</p>
<p>Show me in the Constitution where it says we should spend tax dollars on a Woodstock Museum (and that’s just one example of a democrat-initiated expenditure!).</p>
<p>Coureur: you are embarrassed to be an American? With millions clamoring to become just that every year, that is the most curious statement of all on this thread. Wow. Perhaps, you might not be so embarrassed to be Chinese, or maybe Yemenese, or from Venezuela? </p>
<p>I find it embarrassing that the best country ever on the face of this earth can actually field, seriously, Obama, Clinton, or McCain for president. Each has definite and insurrmountable problems. Out of 300 million - this is the best we can find?</p>
<p>Yes, Bush has made me embarrassed and ashamed to be an American. I hope the next president will repudiate Bush’s actions and apologize to the world.</p>
<p>Good, then all those folks who came here illegally will certainly want to return to their homes while we can hang our heads in shame.</p>
<p>I don’t think pastorgate is going away as quickly as some of you might wish. This column by Thomas Sowell was prominently displayed in my morning paper on the editorial page:</p>
<p>[Thomas</a> Sowell](<a href=“http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell032608.php3?printer_friendly]Thomas”>http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell032608.php3?printer_friendly)</p>
<p>In it Sowell highlights some of Obama’s Marxist tendencies that began in college, and by choice.</p>
<p>Here’s something that is, for me, a very strong argument in favor of a McCain presidency:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN2540966820080325?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true[/url]”>http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN2540966820080325?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true</a></p>
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<p>Yes, I find it very embarrassing that we re-elected Bush in 2004. Not so much that we elected him in 2000, because then we were sold a bill of goods with his “compassionate conservative/uniter and not a divider” schtick. But by 2004 it was clear what we had on our hands and we went and voted him in again anyway. It’s always embarrassing when you make the same mistake twice in a row.</p>
<p>The fact that poor people are eager to come here for jobs in no way reduces the embarrassment brought on by the ineptitude of our leaders. </p>
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<p>Hillary is also a junior senator as was Barry Goldwater in 1964 and John Kennedy in 1960. Being qualified for president has more to do with talent and abilities than with current job titles. There are plenty of senior senators who would make perfectly lousy presidents.</p>
<p>"Yes, I find it very embarrassing that we re-elected Bush in 2004. Not so much that we elected him in 2000, because then we were sold a bill of goods with his “compassionate conservative/uniter and not a divider” schtick. But by 2004 it was clear what we had on our hands and we went and voted him in again anyway. It’s always embarrassing when you make the same mistake twice in a row.</p>
<p>Then you should be wallowing in embarrassment at the wretched candidate set forth by the democrats in 2004.</p>
<p>I’m with the pastor - I say God $#*! America too for electing Bush and getting us involved in a war that we had absolutely no business in. </p>
<p>I’m tired of people complaining about “this is the best we can do”. We end up with people like McCain and Hillary for a reason - corporate funding of our elections and the media. The media has been gnawing on this bone for weeks and all you good little Republicans are spreading the message via places like CC - if you want to know why McCain and Hillary are the best we can do, look no further than the mirror as Xiggi loves to say. Your view is so obscured that you can’t see leadership when it’s standing in front of you.</p>
<p>Sorry, I rarely post on political threads anymore because I can’t remain calm cool and collected.( Sometimes I think nonsense is hidden within what looks like a dispassionate and reasoned post. ) I just can’t sit back and watch fools run the country for another 4 to 8 years. When I see threads like this it looks like we’re headed in that direction.</p>
<p>“Good, then all those folks who came here illegally will certainly want to return to their homes while we can hang our heads in shame.”</p>
<p>All those folks are not Americans, so have nothing to be ashamed of, so have no reason to return.</p>
<p>“Here’s something that is, for me, a very strong argument in favor of a McCain presidency:”</p>
<p>Right, that’s what we need, someone even more war-happy than Bush.</p>
<p>“Right, that’s what we need, someone even more war-happy than Bush.”</p>
<p>What we don’t need is a president who is acceptable to tin-pot dictators like Chavez.</p>
<p>Perhaps some people can’t see a Marxist when he stands in front of them, or perhaps some people don’t care. Anyway, here’s the last paragraph of a speech by Gerald Horne delivered at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at NYU titled “Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party”:</p>
<p>"When these sources are explored, I think scholars of the future will be struck by, for example, the response in Honolulu when tens of thousands of workers went on strike when labor and CP leaders were convicted of Smith Act violations in 1953 – a response totally unlike the response on the mainland. Of course 98% of these workers were of Asian-Pacific ancestry, which suggests that scholars have also been derelict in analyzing why these workers were less anti-communist than their Euro-American counterparts. In any case, deploring these convictions in Hawaii was an African-American poet and journalist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who was certainly in the orbit of the CP – if not a member – and who was born in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson. Eventually, he befriended another family – a Euro-American family – that had migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago. In his best selling memoir ‘Dreams of my Father’, the author speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as “Frank” as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation – though you would never know it from reading so-called left journals of opinion. At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, “Living the Blues” and when that day comes, I’m sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that US imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside. "</p>
<p>That speech can be found on politicalaffairs.net, which describes itself as “Marxist Thought Online”.</p>