Real Politics...Issues...NOT CANDIDATES

Parent Cafe
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<p>I admit that I am a political junkie, but as I look through the threads, it is easy to see (or at least to me), that nobody is budging in their views. Let’s stop Obama VS. McCain and actually debate the true issues!</p>

<p>I had a conversation yesterday with my youngest (14) about the campaign. He had heard that people make their decision based upon the wife and asked if I thought that was stupid? I explained to him, how HRC hurt Bill, Teresa Heinz Kerry also hurt John Kerry, and that this was being brought up b/c of Michelle Obama and her proud to be an American comment. I also told him that a wife can never help and only hurt her husbands career.</p>

<p>In the end, I openly state I am a McCain supporter, it has nothing to do with Bush’s 3rd term, race, Michelle or Wright. It has everything to do with Obama’s thin resume.</p>

<p>That being said I want to see Obama win! I feel that if the pundits are right (Obama wins popularity, but loses electoral) our nation is in for a world of pain. I feel with Obama as President our nation can come together for a brief respite. It will only be brief b/c as the posts on these threads show…it is not about what is best for us, but if you are not with me you are against me…we are all strangers posting on this forum, but it is easy to view that this theory is even being illustrated…look at how posters gang up against 1 person. </p>

<p>I will vote for McCain…I am against Obama’s policies (yes, all of them). I just wonder if the voting public will finally get it is not the President that wields the power, but the people on the hill? I wonder if people who complain about the gas prices, understand that our newest refinery is @35 yrs old? I wonder how you can vote for Nancy Pelosi and support global warming claims (she got a bigger jet to fly x country whenever she wants)! How people say the govt spends too much money, but wants their MOC to get them earmarks! Last, but not least…my favorite…how people will say Bush has the lowest approval rating, yet nobody acknowledges that the MOC’s ratings are WORSE! </p>

<p>If you want change start from the ground up! I am voting against every incumbent. I only wish I was in WV to get rid of BYRD, in January he will have spent 50 yrs in the political arena…nothing against WV, but what has his power wielded…it ranks as the lowest state in median houshold income and the third lowest income per capita (behind Arkansas and Mississippi). What in earth has he done for his constituents, except have every highway named in his honor!</p>

<p>I believe we all want the best for our country, but would it hurt to admit that the opposition may have a point? Can we be honest? I mean truly honest…how many of you want to see their Fed W/H go up to pay for the uninsured…remember with gas prices, college costs, stock market slump…are you willing to pay 20% + in w/holdings for the un-insured when you have your own insurance? How many of us want to pay $7-10 a gallon in gas b4 we say drill in the Artic…how much are you willing to pay before you say UNCLE? How many of us want Roe V Wade overturn when we have young girls who may cross state lines and place their life in jeopardy b/c of parental consent? WHAT HAS YOUR CONGRESSPERSON OR SENATOR DONE FOR YOU? Why is it Bush’s fault and not the MOC? What is good for the Goose is good for the Gander…Bush has put us in IRAQ…it was Congress that caused the Mtg situation, it was the MOC’s that created the 527’s, it was the MOC’s that get the benefit of the earmarks…and it should be the MOCs that explain how they cannot override a veto to get our a** out of of Iraq!</p>

<p>I am done venting! I am just tired of how the MOC’s are getting a pass, and everyone believes the President has the ultimate power…the true ultimate power is in the Hill…this country is made up from a check and balance system, the President needs the Hill, the Hill needs the constituents.</p>

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<p>“I wonder if people who complain about the gas prices, understand that our newest refinery is @35 yrs old?”</p>

<p>I do, and I know that the private oil companies have options on 65 million acres for drilling and haven’t done a thing with it. It’s about time we stopped expecting corporate socialism to take care of all of our problems.</p>

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<p>“I do, and I know that the private oil companies have options on 65 million acres for drilling and haven’t done a thing with it. It’s about time we stopped expecting corporate socialism to take care of all of our problems.”</p>

<p>Where is this land?
What is the cost of oil recovery in this land?
Is there any oil in this land?</p>

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<p>We’ll never find out, because the corporate socialists who own the leases won’t bother to drill. Why should they? They are making out quite well without it, thank you. ;)</p>

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<p>Fine…what about healthcare? What about Iraq? When do we hold our Congress and Senate at the same standard as the President? Why do they get a pass via the media, what difference has BYRD or STROM made?</p>

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<p>“We’ll never find out, because the corporate socialists who own the leases won’t bother to drill. Why should they? They are making out quite well without it, thank you.”</p>

<p>That’s a pretty flippant and irresponsible post. But it’s a lot easier than understanding the actual energy issues. When I buy a mining company, I like to know proven and probably along with recovery costs, and, of course, earnings. I do own oil companies from time to time and usually look for the companies that produce, sell and make a profit from their operations. Some of the companies that I like are scavengers. They buy “used” properties and make the best of them - where it is uneconomic for the larger companies to continue working them.</p>

<p>If you can do a better job on these leases, then why don’t you buy them out and work them yourself?</p>

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<p>Okay, B&P, let’s take it piece by piece. Refineries are not the reason for the increase in gas prices. We have the same number of refineries now as 18 months ago, yet the price of gas has almost doubled since January '07. Think about that. Why would you link two facts with such an obvious lack of correlation? Gasoline prices track crude oil wholesale costs, and speculators driving up the wholesale price of oil are behind it. And voila! we’ve got calls for drilling in Alaska, drilling off the coasts - not that either would do anything at all for gas prices in the short run, and only marginally affect the global market even if brought on line down the road.</p>

<p>The last time we got barraged with the kind of half-truths and distortions we’re seeing around oil today we wound up at war in Iraq. I’d suggest thinking the issues through more carefully next time.</p>

<p>Quick takes: Congress didn’t “create” 527 groups. What makes you think it did? Bush (with the help of his cronies in Congress) is totally responsible for 1/3 of the national debt - primarily because income taxes were cut below the level needed to balance the budget - and add to that the cost of the pointless Iraq war. Yeah - it is Bush’s fault. (The other 2/3 of the national debt is due to Reagan and Bush41 doing the same thing with taxes.)
Health care: We already are paying for health care for the uninsured. We just do it in the least efficient and most expensive way possible - at the County Hospitals and Emergency rooms.</p>

<p>I understand why the current right wing talking point is “Blame it on Congress. Ignore that man over there behind the curtain.” Maybe people will somehow get confused enough not to be able to tell who is responsible for the fix we’re in. But the fact is, the problems we’re facing are overwhelming the product of a Republican majority in both houses of Congress until 2006, working hand in hand with a Republican President in the lead. Everything the 'Pub’s wanted, they got. Fear and greed were the weapons, debt and war are the consequence. </p>

<p>How’s this for a fact I suspect you never knew: The Federal government is about the same size relative to the overall national economy as it’s been for the past 50 years. No bigger, no smaller. The only thing that’s changed is we don’t pay for it any more, because dishonest Republican politicians have been feeding lies and half-truths to the American people about basic economic facts for years. The growing national debt isn’t as dramatic as the lack of WMD’s in Iraq but it’s part of the same phenomenon: America paying a huge price for falsehoods sold to the people by Republican politicians. Plain and simple.</p>

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<p>Your right</p>

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<p>If I read the numbers right Medicaid/Care SS will cost us more that Other Spending! </p>

<p>I have never been the type of person who sits over the spilt milk and wonders what should we do now…I am more of the type that says get a paper towel and clean it up…You want to blame Bush, have at it! My only question is how is that working for the you, the nation or the troops? I am not a fan of how this military action is working out, but I was not elected either. Bush was, you may not have voted for him, but I bet you voted for your MOC…if they failed you, by not changing the course, than you need to re-think!</p>

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<p>“I also told him that a wife can never help and only hurt a woman’s career.”</p>

<p>Interesting self-esteem you must have.</p>

<p>But nice try to get the Congress since you know you have lost the Presidency.</p>

<p>You have lost both. I wouldn’t waste my time on fantasies.</p>

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<p>Wow, do you honestly believe that to be the case?</p>

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<p>Have you ever noticed how when someone has royally screwed up, they start taking the high road about “Let’s work on solving the problem, not laying blame”? But the thing is, without recognizing what’s to blame you can’t understand what the problem is, and you can’t solve it. The problem is that dishonest Republican politicians have successfully sold enough Americans on the shell game of economic policy which waves poor and economically insignificant people (read: welfare recipients, illegal immigrants, minorities, etc.) in front of the voting populace like a red flag in front of a bull, and then does a song and dance about how cutting taxes will make everything just dandy. The gullible voter gets his $500 tax cut, the mega rich walk of with billions each year, with every penny added to the national debt our kids will be saddled with. </p>

<p>Read this article: [Starve</a> the beast - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast]Starve”>Starve the beast - Wikipedia) That’s the problem. Your sudden fascination with “MOC” is just another red flag, designed to distract you from the basic reality of the fix we’re in, and why we’re in it. (And my Congressman for most of the past 10 years has been a Republican, so, no, I didn’t vote for him.)</p>

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<p>Sevenhills, if your proud of the way this new Congress made promises to change the way things get done on the Hill in order to gain control, only to reneg on that promise within two months, by all means continue to crow about YOUR fantasies. </p>

<p>Am I proud of the Bush Administration’s handling of our economy? Not on a long shot. But quite a few posters have forgotten the reason Bush II went after the tax cuts. Our governement, enjoying the benefits of a robust economy and tech-boom that drove the markets sky-high, had a huge SURPLUS. I applauded Bush’s plan to refund the surplus back to the American tax-payer; we could afford it at the time. But it’s the easy way out. He failed, IMO, on doing the hard (but correct thing) taking actio when the economy turned, and when we needed to increase spending because of 9/11 and the war. He had a choice: keep the budget balanced by either increases taxes or decreasing spending, OR do nothing (which was the easy and cowardly thing to do, again IMO) and just accept a defecit. </p>

<p>Where was the call by ANYONE in Congress, from either side of the ailse, to do the right thing and increase taxes and / or cut spending? Cricket noises, anyone? Just as cowardly, and even worse IMO because THE CONGRESS controls the purse strings in this country.</p>

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<p>You need to understand Pima’s perspective here as the wife of a career military officer. Is this the case in our world (wife can’t help a career, only hurt it)? Yeah, you betcha! We’ve both seen careers destroyed because the spouse “didn’t play the game” correctly. Sad, but true.</p>

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<p>Bullet, the national debt had actually declined relative to the size of the economy under Clinton, after having been pushed sky high by Reagan and Bush41. Bush43’s response was to cut taxes. The the economy slumped. Bush43’s response was to cut taxes. He could do it because Republicans controlled congress. He was more wrong the first time. In good economic times the policy should be to reduce the national debt, not increase it. Interest in the debt is the third largest item in the budget. If Reagan, Bush and Bush hadn’t increased the debt relative to the economy (unlike every other president since WWII) we could be using the billions now being spent on interest payments to solve te social security problems. Think how much better off we would be today.</p>

<p>Starve the beast. Understanding that cornerstone of neo-con economic theory explains most of our current economic problems. It’s not a single politician (or type of politician) - it’s the utterly dishonest political philosophy the current Republican party is devoted to.</p>

<p>(P.S. We never really had a surplus in our general budget. Clinton came close, but never quite ran a bona fide surplus. It’s just that under Clinton the deficit in the general budget was less than the excess Social Security tax receipts. Workers were subsidizing the wealthy. The deficit under Bush43 manages to exceed the annual SS surplus.)</p>

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<p>Regarding the 65 million acres of oil leases…I found this online and it made sense to me:</p>

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<p>The reason that this makes sense to me is that we live on 35 acres in south Texas. Twice a seismic company has come along and dropped $1,000 on us in exchange for permission to do seismic testing on our property. There probably isn’t any oil there, but someone keeps hoping. Oil is valuable. Oil companies can sell all of the oil they can produce. It is not in the interest of oil companies to pay money for leases which will never be recouped.</p>

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<p>Well, I hope when making that statement to a 14 year old she qualified it as her opinion about military marriages. A general declaration like that is not only untrue but certainly not what I’d want an impressionable teen to believe.</p>

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<p>I am sure having a husband nickname his wife pain in my ass (pima), your story, contributes to wive’s with such attitudes, and who didn’t play the game correctly.</p>

<p>Hurray for our military!</p>

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<p>bulletandpima:</p>

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<p>Would you please explain further?</p>

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<p>I used myself as an example. That was a statement given to me by a General’s wife many. many yrs ago. It may be untrue to you, but let’s look at it historically in the past 16 yrs:</p>

<ol>
<li>HRC 90-91 Campaign: I am not a stand by your man and bake cookies kind of wife…60 minutes She took a heck of a lot of flack for that comment ffrom stay at home wives.</li>
<li> HRC Health Care/WhiteWater/Travelgate/Tysons…bad press for her!</li>
<li> HRC Monica Lewinsky</li>
<li> Laura Bush and her car accident</li>
<li> Teresa Heinz Kerry and her comment about "I don;t know if Laura Bush ever had a real job, ooops…she was a teacher for 10 yrs!</li>
<li> Michelle Obama…1st time she was proud to be an American</li>
<li>Cindy McCain, her being born with a silver spoon (Anheiser Busch)tax records, drug use,and stealing John away from his 1st wife
…AND THE BEST FOR LAST…Bill Clinton for all of his comments in the dem primary!</li>
</ol>

<p>I may have taken this too personally, but for you to infer that I influenced my child in irresponsible way, is offensive to me

I love my children, I respect them, but most importantly anyone who knows Bullet or I knows we shelter them from the bad things in the world. I definetly know what they emotionally or mentally can handle. </p>

<p>If spouses can’t hurt a candidate than why did any of these comments make the news…why is M.O.'s pride comment still running? You may choose not to be influenced by a wife, but you should at least acknowledge that the media gloms onto it for selling papers, thus many people are influenced!</p>

<p>As far as the mtg situation…here is how it works, HUD forces mtg lenders to give mtgs to high risk, typically an FHA loan, this % is set by HUD, when we were in a boom, there were more loans being given out to high risk buyers, when they started to default b/c the market was over-inflated and they were given a mtg that they could not afford, it snow-balled. The million dollar homes weren’t the 1st to foreclose, it was the high risk that could only qualify using funky loans…once they went, then the next tier had to lower their price, and so on and so forth. I am doing business still with clients who are now buying up properties and becoming landlords, something they couldn’t do in the boom. </p>

<p>Had Congress not created federal regulations in the mtg industry on the % of high risk, it is unlikely IMHO we would be here…the main reason is people who could not qual, would not have bought and the bubble would not have occurres. The worse thing the Hill could do right now is to get involved in the housing sit…let the market come back to its natural place…forcing the banks to freeze will not help the situation…we are all about supply and demand…we went through this in the 90’s, and it worked out, give it time, it will work itself out!</p>

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<p>bulletandpima - </p>

<p>I think your comment may have come across differently had you originally used the word spouse (your later posts DO use the word spouse). The examples you gave are skewed because all the candidates were men, except for Hillary, but you did make an exception there, noting Bill caused problems, too.</p>

<p>I’m guessing that, although not as common as in the world of civilians, there are women higher ups in the military, whose husbands have created barriers to their wives promotions. It’s not as prevalent because there aren’t as many women higher ups, but I suspect it’s just as likely.</p>