Here They Go Again

This article is a distraction. It's feel-good "us-vs-them" fluff when there are real problems facing the country.

Real Americans, Republican and Democrat, are facing a financial meltdown that threatens their futures and their childrens' futures. Oil prices are skyrocketing, credit is drying up, and we're about to start paying more than ever for our winter heat.

We can choose between Obama and McCain.

On the one side, Barack Obama is advised by Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker. Warren Buffett is the eminently sensible billionaire from Oklahoma. Volcker ended the economic misery of the 1970's and went on to manage the Fed under Ronald Reagan.

On the other side, we have John McCain, whose advisers are Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. Gramm is the architect of the deregulation that brought you this meltdown, and called the American public a "nation of whiners". Fiorina was the CEO of HP who was fired after she nearly ran that company into the ground.

Even George Will, the award-winning **CONSERVATIVE** columnist, said that McCain's behavior in the past week was "unpresidential" and made Will "fearful", while Obama was "calm" and "unflustered" (source: Sep. 21, "This Week" on ABC).

Joe 6 pack is right. Take the gay rights stuff out of the Democratic platform, and they win easily. I became a Republican because of it. And I will never return to the Democratic party as long as they promote gay rights.

The real Republican core is economic conservatives who are more worried about cutting their own taxes than anything else. In today's economy this includes most of the relative few who benefit from globalization and other policies that haven't done much for average Americans.

The problem is that there aren't nearly enough people in that core to win an election, so they need to bring in others. Evangelicals still go for the tired running-against-the-Sixties stuff, and they want to hear the right things about issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, school prayer or a number of other things.

As for that last 10% or so of voters they need to go over 50%, the big word is FEAR. Make people vote fears rather than hopes. Working-class America has largely fallen for this and been rewarded with 30 YEARS of stagnant incomes while education and health care zoom out of sight.

When Republicans do get in power, though, they do things mostly to benefit the core economic group (tax cuts at the top, bankruptcy bills favoring banks, anti-union laws, etc.). Other parts of the coalition get table scraps. They say the economy will grow its way out of deficits, yet that never happens under Republicans (Reagan and both Bushes will have ZERO balanced budgets in 20 total years, despite Bush 43 inheriting one!)

This time, though, the 9/11 and national-security bit has worn thin and we're seeing disasters from the deregulatory mentality they pushed so long and hard for. A wedge-issue distraction also won't cut it because things have gotten so bad.

The Democrats used to be the party of the people but now they belong to labor unions, whatever minority or special interest group squalls the loudest, late night talk show hosts, potato heads on Comedy Central, and with the extreme left wing of the party in dominance, it is entirely possible that Robert Redford's omen may come to pass. He said that if the Democrats don't win the Presidential election this time, the Party is finished. And that would be a good thing so maybe it can be rebuilt from ground zero. Barack Obama's appeal has its foundation in the party's core that demands entitlements and fosters the hatred of any elected Government to the right of Fidel Castro or more contemporaneously - Hugo Chavez. The Party was taken hostage by the extremists after the Kennedy assassination when LBJ began the disasterous Great Society and quickly established a welfare state that lasted for generations. There are myriad reasons why some of us left the Democratic Party in the 1960's and 70's and it had nothing to do with religion or race. The Republican party has a far right wing as well, but at the end of the day the party is usually in lockstep when the voting begins. The Democrats are irreparably fragmented, and with con artists Jackson, Sharpton, the disgustingly porcine Michael Moore and his disinformation campaign, the condescending, patronizing Hollywood elite, and Al Gore's scheme to make himself rich - all putting a face on the Democratic Party - it leads any reasonable person to conclude this dog won't hunt. The Republicans seem to be always optimistic and the Democrats are negative to a fault. George Bush (like Carter) will be dismissed as an anomaly and will be largely forgotten soon afterwards - but few in the center or right-of-center see the Democrats as a viable alternative. They have controlled Congress for two years and accomplished nothing. The country will hopefully remain in the center where it belongs because a hard swerve to the left is not the best course correction for the hard right turn we have been in for 7 years. Obama is so mercurial it is impossible to put any substantive meaning in his statements, but given his socialist views and affinity for Marxist professors (his book) and the cast of characters in the Democratic Party - it is no wonder that he is hanging on by a thread this late in the election.

Having just read the idiotic reply by Dale Rutherford (and some of his other garbage) let me begin by pointing out the obvious. The Democrat party controlled Congress from 1952 until 1994, a period of 42 years. During that period they held the White House during the Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton Administrations. Carter had an overwhelming (better than 2 to 1) Democrat majority in Congress, but Carter did NOTHING about the oil problem, NOTHING about alternative energy, NOTHING about the economy and, in fact, gave us the gift of "stagflation". Dale, you obviously are not real bright, but please tell us what was "good" about 22% mortgage interest, 12% unemployment, 19% Inflation, and a military so run down that it could not launch six helicopters to get our hostages? The Democrat Party held control of Congress throughout the 1980's and ran up record deficits (and tried to blame Reagan), while dumbass Democrats who do not understand the workings of the three branches of government drank the Kool-Aid. Clinton is the one who de-regulated Fanie, Freddie and the Banks, while Democrats like Barney Frank and CHris Dodd shoveled thousand of dollars in their pockets. oF COURSE, IT WAS CLINTON WHO STEERED THE HUGE DEFENSE CONTRACTS TO HALIBURTON , all of which were in place before Bush/Cheney were elected.
Two years ago the Democrats regained control of the Congress. Two years is long enough for even the dumbest Democrat to author a bill supervising Fannie mae or Freddie mac (or to support McCAin's regulatory Bell proposed in 2005 but killed by the Democrats in Committee). Yet 2 years of Pelosi and Reid have produced NO LEGISLATION except, of course, a Resolution declaring August "National Watermelon Month".

The problem with this article is that it blames the conservative backlash against the democrats on the failures of Johnson's "Great Society" programs of the sixties, and does not mention those two other little pieces of legislation introduced in '64 and '65, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. It is no coincidence that what had been the "Solid South" for the Democrats has been almost solidly Republican ever since, and it explains why the Dems have been fighting an uphill battle for the last 40 years. Pure racial bigotry explains as much, or more, than people's basic political orientation, especially when a majority of Americans are liberal on so many issues, such as public health care and gun control.