McCain - unfit to lead? Options

[HammaTime]

All I can say is, Wow.

I just finished reading a piece that will be published in the October 16 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine on the life of John McCain. It quickly becomes painfully obvious that an awful lot of his former friends, associates and fellow POW's really detest the man.

It is a brutal, brutal take on the man and his legend:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstor...eal_john_mccain

[Robert]

As I said earlier, I'm not a big McCain fan but in my opinion he still beats the hell out of Obama.
I would agree with you the rush back to DC was a stunt an a poor one at that. Although to me it wasn't any worse then the hackery an political partisanship by the other side.
1st the dems complained he didn't really do anything, then turned around an blamed him for it failing.
McCain going back to DC wasn't any more of a stunt the when Obama going on his whirl wind trip through Europe in some vain attempt to suddenly pickup foreign policy experience.

If you remove all the spin, fluff an BS put out by both side, it comes down to a few simple things.
1) McCain has always been in the right when it comes to pork barrel spending an earmarks. During the debate, Obama tried to downplay this by stating it was such a small part of the overall budget.
If Obama didn't think it was an important issue why did he do a 180 when he decided to run for office. Prior to runing for Pres Obama added earmarks on almost every piece of legislation he touched touched. Then drastically reduced his earmarking after deciding to run for Pres.
Obama's right that it accounts for only a small part of the federal budget but it's the initial stepping stone for dirty politics where people buy political influence an are rewarded at the tax payers expense. Just like at the situation with Obama's wife, do you honestly think Obama becoming a senator didn't have any effect on her job? Her pay almost doubled overnight. Her job didn't change, all that changed is she was suddenly in a position of increased influence. I doubt it was coincidence one of Obama's very 1st earmarks was $1 million to the hospital his wife works at.
Similar to Obama grandstanding that he wouldn't use PAC money even though he had always in the past an used it to start his run for president.
2) I hate both of their tax plans but I hate Obama's worse. I've got no problem with closing off-shore tax havens or loopholes. Both candidates have agreed corp hiding profits is a problem to be fixed. Obama doesn't just want to close the loopholes but also raise Corp taxes. Every single business regardless if they are in goods manufacturing or services, will be negatively affected.
*Prices would have to increase just to stay at the same level of profitability
*American-made goods become more expensive overseas
*High job loss because it is harder to stay profitable
*Prolonged recession
*Increased taxes because the unemployed will look to the government for help
*Lower returns in your retirement account
Every single country over the last two decades have slowly reduced their corp taxes to become more competitive while ours has remained the same. Now Obama wants to make the situation even worse by by raising ours when we've already got one of the highest corp tax rates in the world.
Stupid.... Stupid... Stupid....
I can understand why he wants to do it. It's the only way he can start to pay for his new laundry list of entitlements while bragging about cutting taxes for 95% of the people which was proven to be a lie form day one.
3) McCain has the better energy plan. He's openly supported nuclear why Obama has been very wishy washy about it. McCain is the only one who's had the balls to admit Ethanol as the failure it is. Which I think is a very gutsy thing to do because there is zero way he could win without Ohio, which has gotten a huge windfall in ethanol subsidies.
4) In many ways I think this difference is biggest an most important between the 2.
McCain has a history going against the part line while Obama's record shows he's strictly partisan in his voting. I believe the dems in control of the congress with Obama as President will be a disaster.

But rest easy Obama fans, without some HUGE change in the next 30 days we'll be the Obamanation on Nov. 4th

[HammaTime]

Interesting thoughts.

I would disagree over the issue of corporate taxation. Corporations are taxed based only on their profit. True, the US taxes corporation's profits at a seemingly high rate, but we are very, very close to countries such as Japan, Germany, Spain and others. But, there is more to the story than comparing tax rates. A better method of evaluating the actual tax paid is to look at the percentage of corporate tax as it relates to a country's GDP. If you evaluate the US corporate tax structure in that way, you'll find we have actual taxation that is considerable lower than most all other industrialized nations as this article from SmartMoney illustrates.

The problem really doesn't have an easy political solution, and it really doesn't work to simply cry "less corporate taxes!" Our current system is a mess, and we've got to find a way to prevent our US corporations from playing their shell games and from moving their profits offshore.

Something tells me the current economic crisis is going to demand a hell of a lot of fiscal changes. It strikes me as odd to hear all the arguments for deficit spending, but it seems that will be the only way to get our economic ball rolling once again. The Chinese must be overjoyed as they gobble up more and more of our debt.

As for pork barrel spending, I'm amazed that you'd throw stones in Obama's direction without admitting that Sarah Palin stood neck deep in that pork barrel herself, requesting about $200 million for 2009 alone. That amount far exceeds what Obama sought in earmarks. And John McCain's record shows that he loves the media attention his rants about pork barrel spending have garnered, but those rants have really begun to ring hollow when you see who he brought onto the ticket, and more importantly, you examine the record. That infamous Bear DNA study he loves to rail against - HE VOTED FOR IT!!

If McCain had any interest in keeping his image as a fighter against pork barrel spending, why did he remain silent as the Bailout bill was loaded with lard in a failed effort to win over a few reluctant votes? Of all the times that he could have re-established his creds, that was it. His silence was deafening.

I agree that it looks like the election is solidifying and it appears Obama finds himself in a good position. I was surprised to see today that Obama is ahead in all the toss-up states save one. That is a stunning turn around and seems to be dooming the McCain campaign unless he can pull another stunt.