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
05 June 2008
Dream ticket to a nightmare presidency
If ever anyone doubted the unique ability of Hillary Clinton and her die-hard supporters to seek having everything every which way to suit themselves, then doubt no more. Despite Obama winning the required number of delegates to secure nomination, Clinton refused to concede defeat. Instead, she cynically withheld her concession to extract an invitation to run as Obama's vice-president.
After months of hammering Obama's inexperience and therefore lack of fitness to be president, Clinton now turns around and is seemingly prepared to serve under him?! She publicly calls Obama her "friend" after attacking him personally and playing the race card to boot. Who is Hillary trying to fool? What's wrong with this picture - apart from her monumental hypocrisy?
Does the impression of her being "desperately hungry for power" come to mind when Clinton's latest antics are viewed through the prism of her own words? When husband Bill was president, Hillary certainly felt free to be an ex-officio member of his cabinet. Never mind the small irrelevant detail of her not having received the people's mandate to be anything other than the FLOTUS (First Lady Of The United States).
If Obama makes the grave error of taking Clinton on as vice-president, she will absolutely not be content to be a figurehead office holder. Hillary will demand an active vice-presidency and will probably run her own agenda; to the detriment of an Obama administration.
With Clinton only a heartbeat away from the presidency and if I were Obama, I'd be tripling my Secret Service inner perimeter, deploying a Navy SEAL team middle perimeter and capping things off with a Delta Force outer perimeter. Desperate people hungry for power are likely to say and do anything to get what they covet.
After months of hammering Obama's inexperience and therefore lack of fitness to be president, Clinton now turns around and is seemingly prepared to serve under him?! She publicly calls Obama her "friend" after attacking him personally and playing the race card to boot. Who is Hillary trying to fool? What's wrong with this picture - apart from her monumental hypocrisy?
Does the impression of her being "desperately hungry for power" come to mind when Clinton's latest antics are viewed through the prism of her own words? When husband Bill was president, Hillary certainly felt free to be an ex-officio member of his cabinet. Never mind the small irrelevant detail of her not having received the people's mandate to be anything other than the FLOTUS (First Lady Of The United States).
If Obama makes the grave error of taking Clinton on as vice-president, she will absolutely not be content to be a figurehead office holder. Hillary will demand an active vice-presidency and will probably run her own agenda; to the detriment of an Obama administration.
With Clinton only a heartbeat away from the presidency and if I were Obama, I'd be tripling my Secret Service inner perimeter, deploying a Navy SEAL team middle perimeter and capping things off with a Delta Force outer perimeter. Desperate people hungry for power are likely to say and do anything to get what they covet.
Labels: bill, clinton, hillary, mccain, obama
01 June 2008
Clinton unfit for high office
I was partially surprised to hear about the decision to restore half of the Florida and Michigan delegates to each Clinton and Obama. The committee making this decision is misguided. They allowed the entire party and its rules to be subverted by a vocal and partisan group of people no different to the despised neo-cons.
Both states were long before, warned about the consequences of not toeing the party line but chose to defy the warning anyway. What is the point of having rules if they can be bent to suit a single candidate; particularly one who had herself endorsed the rules?
How is it fair to other candidates who actually obeyed the rules? Why are Florida and Michigan voters sufficiently exceptional that the rules others obeyed, don't apply to them? What message does this send to the broader community? Is the message "if you don't like the way the game is going, change the rules mid-game" a good one to send all over America?
After watching Clinton's antics over the last few months, I've come to the conclusion that she definitely would not make a good leader nor president. She has displayed some disturbing traits:
But all in all, the picture that has emerged of Clinton is of a person who will say and do anything to win office. She wants to have everything every which way to suit her and her alone. She then has the audacity to claim that her self-serving agenda is really selfless sacrifice for the greater good of all!
Let me be clear that I think Obama has much to do to prove he is in fact worthy of being president. It's all very well to talk about the need for change, to restore America's global standing (assuming that's remotely possible), to bring back values-centered government etc.
Duh, you don't need to be Homer Simpson or a nominee for presidential candidate to figure out these things. I mean half the world outside America has been saying this since Herr Bush stole the presidency from Al Gore. What we're all still waiting for with bated breath, is what exactly Obama is going to do to change things and how is he going to do it?
And as for McCain, well his vision for America is 100 years in Iraq (if necessary). I can see that if he's elected, then Paul Kennedy's (in his book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers) unanswered question of whether the US will decline gracefully or disgracefully will be surely answered as the latter.
After all, not even the US can continue spending enormous treasure without imploding its own economy one day. That day will only hasten faster if McCain is president. By the way, where I live, McCain is a brand of frozen vegetables.
Oh what a wonderful choice of pretenders to the throne this coming presidential election brings. Not America's best, surely?
Both states were long before, warned about the consequences of not toeing the party line but chose to defy the warning anyway. What is the point of having rules if they can be bent to suit a single candidate; particularly one who had herself endorsed the rules?
How is it fair to other candidates who actually obeyed the rules? Why are Florida and Michigan voters sufficiently exceptional that the rules others obeyed, don't apply to them? What message does this send to the broader community? Is the message "if you don't like the way the game is going, change the rules mid-game" a good one to send all over America?
After watching Clinton's antics over the last few months, I've come to the conclusion that she definitely would not make a good leader nor president. She has displayed some disturbing traits:
- Repeatedly lied through her teeth about her being "under fire" in Bosnia. And when confronted with evidence of her lies, claims that she "mis-spoke." So are we to take everything she says as mis-speaking of mis-truths?
- Gets other people to play the racial card and then hints the same when it suits her; while denying the same when people get the hint and criticise her for it. The imagery her behaviour invokes is that of a snake or eel slipping through your fingers.
- When people criticise her for playing the racial card, she turns around and complains that she's picked upon because she's a woman. She didn't allege Obama was criticised for his friendship with the firebrand pastor because he is black! Memo to Hillary: It isn't about gender or race, it's about character.
- Clinton endorsed the rules resulting in Florida and Michigan being excluded but now wants them included because it helps her. If the shoe was on the other foot, would she have agreed to Obama doing the same? Obama wasn't even on the Michigan ballot so counting them would clearly disadvantage him.
But all in all, the picture that has emerged of Clinton is of a person who will say and do anything to win office. She wants to have everything every which way to suit her and her alone. She then has the audacity to claim that her self-serving agenda is really selfless sacrifice for the greater good of all!
Let me be clear that I think Obama has much to do to prove he is in fact worthy of being president. It's all very well to talk about the need for change, to restore America's global standing (assuming that's remotely possible), to bring back values-centered government etc.
Duh, you don't need to be Homer Simpson or a nominee for presidential candidate to figure out these things. I mean half the world outside America has been saying this since Herr Bush stole the presidency from Al Gore. What we're all still waiting for with bated breath, is what exactly Obama is going to do to change things and how is he going to do it?
And as for McCain, well his vision for America is 100 years in Iraq (if necessary). I can see that if he's elected, then Paul Kennedy's (in his book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers) unanswered question of whether the US will decline gracefully or disgracefully will be surely answered as the latter.
After all, not even the US can continue spending enormous treasure without imploding its own economy one day. That day will only hasten faster if McCain is president. By the way, where I live, McCain is a brand of frozen vegetables.
Oh what a wonderful choice of pretenders to the throne this coming presidential election brings. Not America's best, surely?
Labels: al, barack, chalmers johnson, clinton, democrats, gore, hillary, mccain, obama, republicans
