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The Obama Nation
Barack Obama and Chris Dodd
I’ve got to wonder if Senator Chris Dodd is still being considered as a potential Vice-President pick by Barack Obama.
After all, Obama could pull his standard, “that’s not the guy I knew” line and excuse Senator Dodd and his sweetheart mortgage deals from Countrywide, a company whose practices he once called “abusive”?
If you’re not up to date on the story, Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got two loans at special rates from Countrywide in 2003 to refinance homes in Washington and East Haddam, CT.
The loans were reportedly part of a “V.I.P.” program, where certain lucky folks received preferential rates from the chairman and chief executive of Countrywide, Angelo Mozilo.
Yes, the same Countrywide that had ties to Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, who served briefly on the committee to help pick a VP for Obama.
He was booted when his questionable connections to Countrywide were revealed.
Stay tuned to this one.
Barack Obama Represents a Change for the Worst
It was reported yesterday that Barack Obama decided to break his pledge to enter into the public financing system.
No great surprise - it’s not as if he’s been honest or consistent. This is just the latest flip flop, and as usual he has a bad excuse.
When trying to explain why he was declining public funding yesterday, Obama cited the role of third party groups, own as 527 groups, saying that McCain is “not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”
That is a pretty lame excuse considering liberal 527 groups spent $146 million during the last Presidential election, while conservative 527 groups spent $46 million over the same time.
And this year, liberal 527 groups are, again, raising and spending far more than conservatives.
Once again, Democrats are cornering the marketing on hate and fear, and they’ll be spending more than ever between their 527 groups and the broken pledge fundraising of Obama.
I guess the public financing system isn’t the one he used to know.
Obama Breaks Campaign Financing Promise
Barack Obama has announced that he will not enter into the public financing system, even thought he previously pledged to do so.
Back in November 2007, Obama answered “Yes” to Common Cause when asked “If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?”
Barack Obama went on to say “I have been a long-time advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests.”
See Question I-B on page 4 of the document from Common Cause.
The only change I am seeing in Obama’s campaign is that he continually changes his mind. Some might call it flip-flopping, or perhaps lying.
More details at http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/06/obama-to-break.html.
Curiously, some Democrats are celebrating the broken promise.
Barack Obama is Not Pro-Choice
My argument for the option of younger workers to use some of their Social Security payments in private investment accounts.
Also, I am bothered by the ongoing misrepresentation by Obama on Republican Social Security plans.
Neither President Bush nor Senator McCain were ever trying to mandate the privatization of Social Security, but rather they wanted younger workers to have the option to control the investment of some of their money.
Freedom of choice - that’s all.
It would be nice if Obama and his colleagues would focus on what they can do, rather than lying as a means to demonize the Republican plans.
Obama Wants to Increase Social Security Taxes
Another day, another proposed tax increase by Barack Obama.
Yesterday, Obama called for jacking up the payroll tax, which would result in tens of thousands of dollars in additional fees for some taxpayers.
The new Obama Social Security tax, the largest tax hike in at least a decade, would apply the 6.2 percent payroll tax to the entire income of workers making $250,000 or more a year.
As it stands now, that rate applies only to the first $102,000 of income.
“Barack Obama likes to think that his tax increases will only hit a few Americans, but in truth, his economic plan will be a disaster for everyone, especially seniors,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said.
“Because of Barack Obama’s tax increases, one out of every three senior households will end up paying higher taxes,” he said.
Obama also reiterated his stance on the option for workers to invest a portion of Social Security, which is either based on ignorance or an intention lie to Americans:
“Privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George W. Bush proposed it. It’s a bad idea today,” Obama said.
Just as it was when George W. Bush proposed it, John McCain supports allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security payments into private accounts.
No mandate - it’s completely optional, and it always has been under the Bush and McCain plans.
John McCain responded to Obama’s comments, “I will not privatize Social Security. But I would like for younger workers, younger workers only, to have an opportunity to take a few of their tax dollars, a few of theirs, and maybe put it into an account with their name on it. That’s their money.”
Exactly. Give people the choice, and get your hands out of their pockets, Nanny Obama!
Why do the Democrats think it’s rational to continually pillage and punish success, while restricting our rights?
Barack Obama Likes to Waste Money
I don’t know about you, but when we go over the budget in my house, we go with a practical approach - we live within our means.
If there is something we want, but we cannot afford it, then we just don’t get it. In essence, we cut our spending.
In government, it works a bit different, at least for Barack Obama.
He’s one of the big spenders of our money when it comes to earmarks. Earmarks, also known as pork barrel, are the appropriation of government spending for projects intended primarily to benefit the home state or campaign contributors of a politician.
In 2007, Obama has $91 million in earmarks for Illinois and his friends.
John McCain takes a different approach. On April 15 in Pittsburgh, here is what McCain had to say about this wasteful spending:
“There will be no more subsidies for special pleaders — no more corporate welfare — no more throwing around billions of dollars of the people’s money on pet projects, while the people themselves are struggling to afford their homes, groceries, and gas.
I will veto every bill with earmarks, until the Congress stops sending bills with earmarks.
I will seek a constitutionally valid line-item veto to end the practice once and for all.
We will institute a one-year pause in discretionary spending increases with the necessary exemption of military spending and veterans’ benefits.”
What do you think? Should we be taxed more by the government or should they cut the pork and spend less?
Carl Icahn: Obama Would Be Terrible President
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn says Barack Obama would be a “terrible” U.S. president, and that his election would bring higher interest rates and a loss of international confidence in the dollar.
“I don’t normally get involved in politics, but this time I am. “I don’t think Obama really understands economics,” commented Icahn an investors conference in New York last night.
So basically, Obama can offer change - he can help change the country to a state of accelerated inflation.
More at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aElyzzHkNwCY&refer=home.
Elect Obama for a Second Term of Jimmy Carter
Democrats are constantly parroting their party line that McCain would be the equivalent of a third term for President Bush.
While McCain is markedly different from Bush in a wide assortment of ways, such as global warming, spending cuts and the estate tax, it is hard to look at Obama without seeing the peanut farmer from Georgia.
Obama supporters prefer to liken Obama to JFK. I wish. JFK was a hawk that supported tax cuts.
Some “Change We Can Believe In” like Obama’s “windfall profits tax”? How did that go during the Carter administration?
Obama runs around with his “tax cuts for the wealthy.” Check, another Carterism.
Obama thinks he can chat up the leaders of our enemies and work his magic. How did that Iran thing work out, Jimmy? There was the famous kiss between Carter and Brezhnev. Besides creeping out Leonid, what did Jimmy accomplish there?
Obama pledges to stop the research and deployment of a missile defense. Carter had the same grand idea. Reagan created the system and ended the Cold War.
Carteresque policies that Obama champions amounted to raised unemployment rates, interest rates and inflation rates into the double digits back in the 1970s.
Second verse, same as the first. Obama promises “change” to once again measuring things with a “Misery Index” and a country in a “malaise”.
Welcome Back, Carter.
Obama, Answer the Question, Sweetie
A few days back, Peggy Agar of WXYZ-TV in Detroit shouted a question to Barack Obama during his appearance at a Chrysler LLC plant in Sterling Heights, MI.
She asked, “Senator, how are you gonna help the American auto worker?”
His response…
“Hold on one second, sweetie. We’ll do a press avail, thanks.”
Obama never got back to her on that question, but he got some heat for calling the female reporter “sweetie.”
So, he called Peggy Agar and left a message to apologize for calling her sweetie, and for not getting back to her.
When asked about it later, Agar said she wasn’t really offended that Barack called her sweetie. She said she “felt more offended that he didn’t answer the question.”
So Obama, what are you going to do to help American autoworkers?
And for anybody who cares about Obama saying “sweetie,” it wasn’t his first time saying it on the campaign trail.
As reported in the New York Times, Obama called a female factory worker “sweetie,” in Allentown, PA last month.
