kmguru: "Wonder what the future will hold under McCain?" I expect a McCain Presidency would compound our recent decline in US world/economic standing.
Please explain what the hell you're talking about? Who is it that believes in hope? The man who gives a speech about "malaise" and suggests wearing a sweater as a solution for the energy crisis (Carter), or the guy who says "It's morning in America" (Reagan). Reagan was full of hope. Consider his strategy for the cold war (and I quote) "We win". And, other than Obama's fantasy land version of hope, how can you possibly say that the Left stands for hope? The Left is full of nothing but excuses. Reasons why the individual can't possibly succeed on his own. The Left tries its best to stamp out all hope and make us all helpless dependents of the government. You can't succeeed on your own if you're black. Why? Because 200 years ago black people were slaves. You need affirmative action and a variety of other government programs to survive. You can't survive if you're female. If you're old. If you are any kind of minority. You can't survive without speech codes to protect your delicate sensibilities. The central goal of the left is to turn us all into beggars. To take so much of our money from us that we need to then come begging, on our knees, to get a little of it back. That's the "hope" of the Left. The Right believes in the individual. In the strength, ingenuity, and drive of the American people. We see government, most of the time, as the problem, not the solution. Why? Because we have hope. Because we know that every man knows more about what he needs, what's best for him, than some government bureaucrat.
So, Obama is "left" according to you. And the Left stand for the inability of a black person to succeed on their own. So Obama stands for the inability of black people to succeed on their own. Got it. The authoritarian right believes in the corporation, the military, and the band of brothers - not the individual. The libertarian believes in the individual. Lots of lefties, in that crowd. ACLU types, too. John McCain is not in that crowd.
mad, what do you think the point of the femist movement was? the gay movement? Yes some of them want "special treatment" (which is why i hate being called a feminist and prefer humanitarian) but alot of them just want true equality. In the case of the gay lobby they just want to be able to marry who they love the same as everyone else. Isnt that the ideal of a libitarian? yes small vs big goverment can be argued as being right\left debate but thats not all the left stand for
You're right. At one time, the Left supported things like the civil rights act, or the right of women to vote, etc. But those days are over. Now they support things like affirmative action. Rather than wanting equal treatment, they demand special consideration. Allocating benefits based upon race, sex, or whatever is not a libertarian value.
Allocating benefits now based upon skin color to make up for allocating benefits hundreds of years ago based upon skin color does not heal a festering wound, it creates new ones. The way you address an evil or wrong deed is to stop doing it, not by simply picking a new victim. Yes, and they call that "affirmative action". Of course not. Again, of course not. But neither is it right to perpetuate the injustice by victimizing a whole new generation in the name of "reparations". The time for reparations was the 1860's. The slaves are all dead now, as are the masters. Interesting in that it shows that the axis names are incorrect. The opposite of absolute authoritarianism is not libertarian, it is anarchy. A libertarian should fall at about the middle of the authoritarian scale as we do not support anarchy, but freedom. I'd have labeled the left/right axis as libertarian/collectivist and the up/down as authoritarian/anarchy.
The people who were redlined in the 60s and 70s are still alive - Obama is from a district that suffered quite a bit from the riots and resistance to breaking the racial redlines in housing loans etc. The people who were denied agricultural subsidies and other government benefits in the latter 1900s are still alive - some of them managed to stay in farming against the subsidized white farmers competing for land and markets, most were forced off their own farms into wage labor in the inner cities and rural towns. The people who were robbed of hundreds of millions in contracted oil and gas royalties by racially biased government agency action and private corruption during the latter 1900s are still alive. The children of the people who were denied university educations on racial grounds, and who therefore must compete on grades and luck for limited places rather than count on legacy admission to (say) Yale, are still alive - and they get to watch one of those white man's legacy admissions that took places denied to them, preen as President. And your implication that Obama favors reparations for slavery is a lie. Your interpretation of the scale as referring to greater or lesser government power only is a standard authoritarian mistake. The scale is one of individual liberty, as well, and anarchy would be a point at one end. Tyranny would be at the other. The scale in between is not tyranny/anarchy, but authoritarian/libertarian. Unless you think civil liberty is anarchy. I think my own freedom is maximized under a government authority/ individual liberty balance of about -5 on that scale. And when you found that fascist Italy had a libertarian/authoritarian government, would you have reconsidered your redefinition, and gone back to standard usage ? Most people do not identify jackboots and concentration camps with libertarian principles.
Have you ever heard of working your way up, many a white has done it from the very bottom of poverty, many a Black has done so to, and so has every other race in America, no government help, just long hard back breaking determination to succeed. It seem the more the Government get involved, the more who find a life in the safety net is easier than working to get out. Why should my drive and determination to succeed be taxed, and given to some one else, who doesn't have the gumption to get a education on his own, or feed himself and his family, or support the bastards he whelps in the hood from his bitch baby mama. Yes you have your supposed freedom at the expense of my labor.
Sounds good. Next time you meet someone who was denied agricultural loans for five consecutive years due to his race, and had to quit his own farm when the drought finally busted him and take a job working for a white man who got loans to tide him over, you tell him he just needs to work hard like everyone else. Put your thumbs in your suspenders while you deliver the lecture - that's always impressive.
Housing: The Elitist's Burden John McCain suddenly finds him in the midst of his own troubles with elitism: If only that was the sum of the housing crisis in the United States, McCain would be golden. Talk about a white man's burden .... ____________________ Notes: "McCain takes heat over another U.S. housing crisis ... his own". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. August 22, 2008. http://www.cbc.ca/world/usvotes/story/2008/08/22/mccain-houses.html
Two hundred billion reasons why John McCain sucks And one more, because they just seem to come out of the woodwork some days: Golob, Jonathan. "McCain’s Corruption Already Cost You Over 200 Billion Dollars, Taxpayer". Slog. August 21, 2008. http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/08/mccains_corruption_already_cost_you_over It's just a rerun of the Keating scandal, but it might be worthwhile to remember that price tag: The next time someone complains about "tax and spend" Democrats, remember that taxing people and spending money is part of what government is supposed to do. And while some complain that taxes are a form of theft, there's not much to be said compared to the "steal and bailout" Republican.
Please provide citation of such a incident, name, date, and proof that it was skin color that was the cause. I know many a white farmer, two from my own family, and black farmers, who have lost the farm, because of debt problems, they had reached the point of indebtedness, that they were no longer eligible for loans. That is not racism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-nickolas/did-mccain-steal-his-cros_b_119471.html The problem here is not McCain's ever-suspect and malleable memory, or his leveraging of POW stories into political capital, but the disparity between the media's handling of this stuff in McCain's case as opposed to Obama's. If there even were anything like this in Obama's case. How about an aftermath of a won lawsuit, that proved in court skin color was behind thousands of such cases ? http://www.ewg.org/node/22214 That's just the Pigford case. One of several. But the point here is larger: this stuff has been all over the news for many years now. You are asking me to provide citation for common knowledge, stuff anyone who reads the paper has been familiar with for decades.
The revelation that McCain does not know how many houses he owns, has led to a general estimate that he owns 7-12 separate dwellings , not counting four or five auxiliary dwellings on estates. Let's say nine. It's a reasonable estimate, and cuts him what slack is available. That's nine house keys, and house keys normally have their own rings - so: nine rings. Seems like a familiar situation, somehow.
This character called McCain Source: TruthOut.org Link: http://www.truthout.org/article/the-hollow-man Title: "The Hollow Man", by William Rivers Pitt Date: August 31, 2008 From the opinion desk that is the most part of TruthOut comes a searing assessment of Arizona Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain: The article struck me strangely at first; the dialogue about McCain has had more, at least to my ear, to say about his military service, his foreign policy "credentials" that are so strong he can totter along in a senile daze while the press gives him a free pass, whether or not the "maverick" label applies to his record of openly supporting the Bush administration, and policy flip-flops on those occasions when he used to disagree with the outgoing president. At least Pitt didn't get into the cunt-faced trollop bit, and perhaps as a bone thrown to the GOP he omitted discussion of McCain's bogus opposition to special-interests and lobbyists. So you can't say he's not doing the Arizona Senator any favors. Of course, McCain makes it so easy, that piling everything on at once might seem just a bit cruel. After all, we shouldn't treat the elderly like that, should we? And a war hero, at that. "Could I just mention to you Jay, that in a moment of seriousness, I spent five and a half years in a prison cell, I didn't have a house, I didn't have a kitchen table, I didn't have a table, I didn't have a chair ...." —John McCain, on how many houses he owns____________________ See Also: "Leno Asks McCain How Many Houses He Has, McCain Answers With POW Status". The Huffington Post. August 26, 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/26/leno-asks-mccain-how-many_n_121389.html
