14 September 2008
Sarah Palin is Dick Cheney in drag
Like many people, I thought Sarah Palin's emergence as fascinating and game changing for Senator John McSame. Choosing her as his running mate, has given the wily Senator a good chance of winning now.
Palin will cement the votes of people who are never going to go for an African-American president, and win over Republicans fed up of Bush and suspicious of McSame. She is also going to cement the votes of Clinton supporters angry that Hillary wasn't anointed as the Democratic presidential nominee.
As an aside, these Clinton supporters are both racist and feminazis in outlook by refusing to transfer their votes to Obama. But of course, they would deny being racist. So a simple test would be to ask if they would have voted for Barack if he had twice Hillary's experience? I think the answer would still be no.
Now this isn't to say Obama is a great candidate either. You may recall that in an earlier post, I said that if he was unable to explain convincingly, what he intended to change, how he would do and pay for it, then voters were entitled to conclude Obama was full of hot air.
As I watched his acceptance speech, I was and still am unconvinced he really can turn the country around. Obama made lots of laudable spending promises but offered insufficient offsetting spending cuts and tax increases to pay for it all.
Tax increases he mentioned absolutely cannot pay for the existing budget deficit let alone the new spending he's promised. The arithmetic is simple. For 2008, spending will exceed income by $410b and for 2009, it will be $407b.
In other words, ignoring new promised spending, Obama must find $407b extra in taxes, or in spending cuts, or a combination of both - just for 2009. With an economy going down the crap tube, increasing corporate and high income personal taxes can't close this gap.
Slashing the bloated defence budget in half will help a lot. But this would be political suicide for him. And, might I add, it will never happen because a militaristic society (which is what America is) will never accept this. As an aside, why do I regard America as a militaristic society?
If you look at the US from a foreigner's perspective, the frequent small town military parades, gun culture, ostentatiously patriotic flag waving, a military budget equalling that of the rest of the world combined, pre-occupation with a candidate's service record (or lack thereof), incessant references to the "commander-in-chief", bellicose threats against countries who refuse to be vassal states etc...all these smack of a militaristic society believing that power comes from the barrel of a gun.
And that's what the Bush regime practised for the last eight years.
Patrick Buchanan, himself an arch conservative (and White House communications director in the Reagan administration), observed recently,
"Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them."
But I digress.
Whether McSame or Obama ends up in the White House, the legacy problems left by Bush are so enormous and deep-seated that real solutions will require more than two terms and an emphatic victory to deliver.
And if McSame and Palin win, real solutions are very likely to recede into oblivion; to be replaced by more neo-con Voodoo economics - you know, the type practised by the Bush regime.
Palin will cement the votes of people who are never going to go for an African-American president, and win over Republicans fed up of Bush and suspicious of McSame. She is also going to cement the votes of Clinton supporters angry that Hillary wasn't anointed as the Democratic presidential nominee.
As an aside, these Clinton supporters are both racist and feminazis in outlook by refusing to transfer their votes to Obama. But of course, they would deny being racist. So a simple test would be to ask if they would have voted for Barack if he had twice Hillary's experience? I think the answer would still be no.
Now this isn't to say Obama is a great candidate either. You may recall that in an earlier post, I said that if he was unable to explain convincingly, what he intended to change, how he would do and pay for it, then voters were entitled to conclude Obama was full of hot air.
As I watched his acceptance speech, I was and still am unconvinced he really can turn the country around. Obama made lots of laudable spending promises but offered insufficient offsetting spending cuts and tax increases to pay for it all.
Tax increases he mentioned absolutely cannot pay for the existing budget deficit let alone the new spending he's promised. The arithmetic is simple. For 2008, spending will exceed income by $410b and for 2009, it will be $407b.
In other words, ignoring new promised spending, Obama must find $407b extra in taxes, or in spending cuts, or a combination of both - just for 2009. With an economy going down the crap tube, increasing corporate and high income personal taxes can't close this gap.
Slashing the bloated defence budget in half will help a lot. But this would be political suicide for him. And, might I add, it will never happen because a militaristic society (which is what America is) will never accept this. As an aside, why do I regard America as a militaristic society?
If you look at the US from a foreigner's perspective, the frequent small town military parades, gun culture, ostentatiously patriotic flag waving, a military budget equalling that of the rest of the world combined, pre-occupation with a candidate's service record (or lack thereof), incessant references to the "commander-in-chief", bellicose threats against countries who refuse to be vassal states etc...all these smack of a militaristic society believing that power comes from the barrel of a gun.
And that's what the Bush regime practised for the last eight years.
Patrick Buchanan, himself an arch conservative (and White House communications director in the Reagan administration), observed recently,
"Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them."
But I digress.
Whether McSame or Obama ends up in the White House, the legacy problems left by Bush are so enormous and deep-seated that real solutions will require more than two terms and an emphatic victory to deliver.
And if McSame and Palin win, real solutions are very likely to recede into oblivion; to be replaced by more neo-con Voodoo economics - you know, the type practised by the Bush regime.
Labels: barack, buchanan, cheney, clinton, democratic party, hillary, mccain, obama, palin, patrick, reagan, republican party, sarah
