Who knew that John McCain was such a gambler? In this campaign, he has rolled the dice on many occasions.
When he was behind in the polls at the beginning of the campaign, McCain staked everything on his proposal for a surge in Iraq. McCain was the leading force for an insertion of additional forces in Iraq at a time when most Americans were against the war. The gambit paid off as the President adopted the policy and the surge worked. For the first time since the war started, we are making real progress in Iraq and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. McCain deserves a tremendous of credit for this success.
McCain’s next big gamble involved selecting Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. Palin was considered a long shot and most of the national media was unfamiliar with her record. The media was caught flat footed by the selection and they have reacted with anger and by harshly attacking her. Yet, the base of the Republican Party has enthusiastically embraced Palin and her presence on the ticket has helped boost crowds and overall support for the ticket all over the nation. Again, it was a gamble that has seemed to work. For a while, he even was ahead in the polls.
As attention has turned toward the economy, McCain’s fortunes have turned sour. This is not his strong suit and the American public is blaming the Bush administration and Congress for the economic problems. As high level talks continue on a $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan, McCain made his next gamble. He suspended his campaign and returned to Washington to focus on the bill. Initially, McCain said he would not debate unless an agreement was reached. Well, no agreement has yet been reached and McCain was not successful in hammering out a solution. Too many congressional Republicans and ordinary Americans have expressed their anger about this bailout bill. There is very little sentiment for Wall Street executives to receive any sort of a bailout.
Eventually, McCain decided to return to the campaign trail. So, he is going to Ole Miss to debate Obama tonight. Did his political maneuver earn his credit with the American people? We will not know until the next set of polls are released
At this point, McCain needs to reestablish momentum and take the initiative from Obama. It might start tonight in a debate about national security and foreign policy, two areas where McCain holds a clear advantage over Obama.
McCain should do well, but, if for some reason, Obama holds his own with McCain tonight, it will be a big victory for the Illinois Senator and the dynamics of the race will not change. At this point, no change in the race is good news for Obama,
Jeff Crouere is the Host of “Ringside Politics,” which airs at 7:30 p.m. Fri. and 10:00 p.m. Sun. on WLAE-TV 32, a PBS station, and 7 till 11 a.m. weekdays on WGSO 990 AM in New Orleans and the Northshore. He is the Political Analyst for WGNO-TV ABC26 and the Political Editor for NewOrleans.com. For more information, visit his web site at RingsidePolitics.com.
Well 'read and practice your own comprehension skills',,,, When you put down staring (probably a msp. You meant starting I am sure) with devaluing our currency by removing its ties to gold and silver”” This is NOT the first time in U.S. history that we did not go by the gold standard…. I suppose it takes a lot of different experiences in life to understand what is going on, and perhaps that is what we suffer, people with no real experience.... Just Television and classroom time....... And the reason we are not on the gold standard is because if we were, then the cost of obtaining gold for anything ranging from the connectors on the airbags in cars, to caps and crowns for teeth, and everything else in between from wedding bands to electronics and computers would be so cost prohibitive that they couldn’t be made…. I think the world’s supply of gold can fit in something like 7 or 8 railroad box cars…. The United States has the largest reserve of gold bullion on the planet, followed by Germany at #2…… Now gold is good, and if the valuation of the dollar is a problem for you, then buy Canadian Maples, Krugerands, Golden Eagles, avoid bullion though, while the previous three are non-taxable items, bullion is…… I heard that there is approximately 1 tonne of gold per cubic mile of seawater….. The problem is that it costs around two or three times as much as the gold is worth to extract it…. Gold never goes down in value….. That is a static…. But when you speak in terms of the relevant dynamics of Price/Cost, that is where GNP and GDP factors come into account which what our ‘economies’ are based on… Soooooooo, if you have a bunch of lazy, over consuming, overpriced, non producing entities on the suck, the values are either inflated, or deflated….. Take your choice… Because they have an effect on the valuation processes of other related goods ranging from durable, to agricultural, to information, and on and on and on……………….. I like beer, especially a porter beer…. Back in the old days beer was an excellent source of non polluted liquids……. And porter beers were named for the porters on the docks that moved all the goods off ships… This was back breaking work, and the beer satisfied their thirst, and sort of dulled their senses to the pain as they tore their bodies up moving tons of freight around the docks each day……. There used to be gadzillions of porters…… The character in Cinderella Man got work as a porter… I wasn’t too happy with the movie though, I personally knew his brother Buddy Baer, and the one hit wonder ‘Max’ took no pride in the deaths of two boxers he had fought… And he wasn’t a mean person either,….. Lives weren’t considered to be meaningless back in those times……. But back in those days things were different, and cage fighting was among the ways to make a living on the docks of Richmond, or elsewhere for that fact….. Funny when I watch Rodney Dangerfield’s ‘Back to Men’s clothing store in Sacramento California……. His nephew is Max Baer Jr., or Jethro Bodine…. ‘But that’s the movies for you I guess. Anyways, back to porters…….. They didn’t make a whole heck of a lot, and owning a home was more of a dream than a reality for them….. They don’t exist like they used to, and today one man working a lift crane on the docks can move 70,000# every 60 seconds….. He makes around 140 – 180K per year, and it is in this situation I agree with Unions… I wish they still had cabooses for the older workers on the lines….. So valuation, I would suppose it should be in accordance to what a man’s back can bear……….. Perhaps mechanization has a big part to do with the problems, being as you like to bring H.G. Wells into the discussion… I liked his book ‘The Time Machine’….. But somewhere between the ownership of gold, and the ownership of a house, and the position of having a job and knowing what to do with the money you earn, that is where your quandary lays.. I have many answers to many problems, but, that is just another quandary in their selves because I don’t think people really want to fix any perceived problems at all… I think they just want to sit around and look at them for entertainment purposes…. That is, until they experience them their selves… And then you are talking another economic tangent………………….. PERCENTAGES………… Written by
on 9/29/2008
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Well............'read and practice your own comprehension skills',,,, When you put down staring (probably a msp. You meant starting I am sure) with devaluing our currency by removing its ties to gold and silver”” Your reasonings sort of get a little skewed....... You are close, but you are not on the mark.... I suppose it takes a variety of lifes experiences and understandings to have a fairly good idea of why things are not as great as they should be... And by the way, this is NOT the first time in U.S. history that we did not go by the gold standard…. And the reason we are not on the gold standard is because if we were, then the cost of obtaining gold for anything ranging from the connectors on the airbags in cars, to caps and crowns for teeth, and everything else in between from wedding bands to electronics and computers would be so cost prohibitive that they couldn’t be made…. I think the world’s supply of gold can fit in something like 7 or 8 railroad box cars…. The United States has the largest reserve of gold bullion on the planet, followed by Germany at #2…… Now gold is good, and if the valuation of the dollar is a problem for you, then buy Canadian Maples, Krugerands, Golden Eagles, avoid bullion though, while the previous three are non-taxable items, bullion is…… I heard that there is approximately 1 tonne of gold per cubic mile of seawater….. The problem is that it costs around two or three times as much as the gold is worth to extract it…. Gold never goes down in value….. That is a static…. But when you speak in terms of the relevant dynamics of Price/Cost, that is where GNP and GDP factors come into account which what our ‘economies’ are based on… Soooooooo, if you have a bunch of lazy, over consuming, overpriced, non producing entities on the suck, the values are either inflated, or deflated….. Take your choice… Because they have an effect on the valuation processes of other related goods ranging from durable, to agricultural, to information, and on and on and on……………….. I like beer, especially a porter beer…. Back in the old days beer was an excellent source of non polluted liquids……. And porter beers were named for the porters on the docks that moved all the goods off ships… This was back breaking work, and the beer satisfied their thirst, and sort of dulled their senses to the pain as they tore their bodies up moving tons of freight around the docks each day……. There used to be gadzillions of porters…… The character in Cinderella Man got work as a porter… I wasn’t too happy with the movie though, I personally knew his brother Buddy Baer, and the one hit wonder ‘Max’ took no pride in the deaths of two boxers he had fought… And he wasn’t a mean person either,….. Lives weren’t considered to be meaningless back in those times……. But back in those days things were different, and cage fighting was among the ways to make a living on the docks of Richmond, or elsewhere for that fact….. Funny when I watch Rodney Dangerfield’s ‘Back to Men’s clothing store in Sacramento California……. His nephew is Max Baer Jr., or Jethro Bodine…. ‘But that’s the movies for you I guess. Anyways, back to porters…….. They didn’t make a whole heck of a lot, and owning a home was more of a dream than a reality for them….. They don’t exist like they used to, and today one man working a lift crane on the docks can move 70,000# every 60 seconds….. He makes around 140 – 180K per year, and it is in this situation I agree with Unions… I wish they still had cabooses for the older workers on the lines….. So valuation, I would suppose it should be in accordance to what a man’s back can bear……….. Perhaps mechanization has a big part to do with the problems, being as you like to bring H.G. Wells into the discussion… I liked his book ‘The Time Machine’….. But somewhere between the ownership of gold, and the ownership of a house, and the position of having a job and knowing what to do with the money you earn, that is where your quandary lays.. I have many answers to many problems, but, that is just another quandary in their selves because I don’t think people really want to fix any perceived problems at all… I think they just want to sit around and look at them for entertainment purposes…. That is, until they experience them their selves… And then you are talking another economic tangent………………….. PERCENTAGES………… Written by
on 9/29/2008
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While I agree that her experience is limited, would you not admit that many Democratic supporters started to speak of Hillary Clinton as a potential president before Bill Clinton ever took office? Hillary had no government experience at that time, but many would gladly have annointed her "Dictator for Life." Honestly, does not ideology count for more than "experience." Is it not true that those Republicans who critise Obama for this lack of experience would not vote for him regardless of his experienxce level? Is this not also true of the Democratics who critise Palin? I can honestly say that both VP candidates detract from their tickets, I will vote for Obama, but Joe Biden is not someone who I'd want to have his finger on the nuclear trigger. As someone who has watched C-Span and C-Span II I can attest that Biden sometimes "loses it" - I am actually quite surprised that Barak Obama picked him as his running mate. Written by kpf
on 9/29/2008
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It's particularly telling that in all of the video of McCain in Washington there's Joe Lieberman following him around constantly but even with the campaign supposedly suspended when there's serious work to be done his "partner" Sarah Palin is nowhere to be found. She may have been OK as a small town mayor but even as a governor (of a definitive low-population state) she's clearly still a work in progress and that leaves her well short of what's needed to "a heartbeat away..." and that's been obvious in these interviews, even with her having been available to the media as little as she has. Written by Richard P.
on 9/29/2008
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It is not "just" Jimmy Carter and the Democrats; rather it is GOVERNMENT interference - staring with devaluing our currency by removing its ties to gold and silver - which is the cause of this mess. Obama and McCain are owned by the Wall Street banking interests - as are both of our two "major political parties." In any case here's a take on matters that is quite different from what the news media (owned by the SAME big moneyed interests, BTW) will provide, namely from congressmen Ron Paul:The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.__________________We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets._____________Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.____________Still, at least a few observations are necessary.___________
The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?______________We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.________
Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).___________________Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."________________Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?_________________Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.
________________It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year. __________________The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days. _________________ F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:__________Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion._________________To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression._______________The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.________________The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?_________________Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people._____________The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them._________________I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn._____________________H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.
Written by read and practice your own comprehension skills
on 9/29/2008
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If McCain has enough courage to dump Palin that would restore some of my faith in him. His selection of her was nothing more than a stunt to pander to the right wing. If he dumps her then what, though? Yes, she's definitely starting to become poison to his campaign. Written by Richard P.
on 9/28/2008
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ABC/Newsweek is now projecting Obama the winner with 278 electoral votes. This scenario gives him MI, PA, VA, CO, NC, NV and NM. It gives FL and OH to McCain and he still loses. McCain better figure something out quick. And it might have to involve dumping Palin. She's now electoral poison. Let's see how much of a gambler he really is. Written by Andrew
on 9/28/2008
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Wrong. Completely, utterly effing wrong. In a free market, it's the job of the bankers to do their own job. Get it?? You didn't want government to hold your hand, then fine. You got it, thanks to the GOP in the 1990's. Then do your own effing job, which the bankers themselves DID NOT DO. That's the cause of this mess, period, full stop. Now they come back to government, having made the mess. No, ten million times no...Jimmy Carter and Democrats did NOT do this. If you can't get that, your english-speaking and understanding skills must not exist. Written by Richard P.
on 9/28/2008
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What's BS is liberals like Carter and Clinton urging lenders to loan money to people who cannot afford the payments(see the link below) when a true "free market" would NEVER have risked making these loans, then blaming "unregulated free markets" for the f#ck up they caused. Oh yeah, no one held a gun to people's heads to force them to take out loans they could not pay back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act Written by kpf
on 9/28/2008
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That's pure BS. Say what you want about Clinton but Jimmy Carter had absolutely zero to do with this. Moreover, it's squarely the responsibility of the bankers themselves to analyze and price risk properly and the main cause of the mess is that they themselves failed to do that. They wanted the government out of their way so that they could do business the way they wanted and not have the government holding their hands or looking over their shoulders and with the GOP congressional leaders, especially McCain and Phil Gramm, leading the way in the 1990's the government obliged. No one in government held a gun to the bankers' heads and forced them to engage in shoddy business practices. Written by Richard P.
on 9/28/2008
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Remember that the Carter & Clinton administrations pushed the lending agencies to lend more money to people who couyld not pay back the mortages. Barney Frank & Chris Dodd have blood on their hands, but they are not the only guilty parties. Democrats & republicans alike are guilty and we need to vote these career politicians out of office. It's not a partisan issue people. Written by Sid
on 9/28/2008
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The Republicans have been the party in power and over the years have given the bankers what they've asked for in terms of deregulation and it has not worked. So yes...the GOP (too closely) allied with the bankers are to blame. Written by Richard P.
on 9/27/2008
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Does anybody out there think that the Barney Franks, Chris Dodds and other entrenched politicians had anything to do with the "mess" we're in? Or is it easier to blame everything on Pres. Bush? Written by Sid
on 9/27/2008
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Do we want a high stakes gambler in the White House? McCain consistently shows bad judgment and bad temperment. Judgment and temperment trump experience every time. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were the most experienced people in Washington and look at the mess they made! Written by David Quidd
on 9/27/2008
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Well, if you are referring to her wisdom in knowing that she has to get the paperwork done before she applies her makeup; I am in complete agreement with you there Richard.................... Even McCain knows that the important paperwork has to be taken care of, or the crappy situation just gets messier as everyone walks along..... Take WaMu for instance…. Folks in a panic, making a run on the banks, Govmnt has to step in with the FDIC provisions….. WaMu still there, stocks are toast though, anyone with over 100K in one account loses (paperwork there Richard, paperwork, due diligence, you know) and why? People are stampeding like lightning crazed cattle……. As FDR said; “There is nothing to fear but fear itself”…. I agree with you when you say the folks in office are idiots… For the most part they are so out of touch with reality that it is simply incredible at times……. Take Piyush for instance, idiot going to Washington, to waste their time, while Texas has big problems, our monetary industry has big problems, and he is hassling with FEMA….. I think it is time for him to look around at the resources that Louisiana has on hand, start the work anyway, and wait for funds to arrive…. He is clueless as well… Ask not what your country can do, but rather what you can do for your country… Folks weren’t content with a 3% or a 4% return on CD’s, or T-Bills, etc., etc., etc….. They imagined 25% , 50% , 1000% , returns….. and blew their money…… Folks that couldn’t afford it….. I saw a fireman, lost everything, in the stock market that is……. Lives in a 300+K house… has retirement benefits, from the taxpayer, medical, dental, Social Security….. etc., etc….. Well, he wanted millionaire status, he lost…… Wouldn’t invest into the system that made his retirement possible, T-Bills, the bank, etc., public bonds, he wanted to go capitalistic while he lived off a socialistic system… Teachers? Same thing……. Know your role…………. Take tomatoes for instance.. What? A buck each at the store? One plant yields 5, 6, 10 or more tomatoes during its life cycle? How many crops a year? Some places one, some places two, even three with visquene wraps to protect from cold nights or days…… So, 1,000 5 gallon buckets with dirt and tomatoes… 6,000 tomato’s once a year, 12,000 twice a year, 18,000 three times a year…… 50 cents each…… 3,000 or 6,000, or 9,000 bucks a year. X10, $30,000 or 60,000 or 90,000 bucks.. X 20 60,000, 120,000 or 180,000 a year. What? No time to do that? Well what is the wife doing? Oh, I know, spending 14,000 a year so that she can earn 18,000 a year on take home chicken because she no longer cooks, (doesn’t have the time) and makeup, and shoes, and clothes, and a second car, and insurance and gas, etc., etc., etc….. All because she wants that freedom of equal rights…. Well, now everyone can equally be in trouble…… And equally broke and fearful of the future….. So who cares about the campaign for a week or two? Because the problem that has to be addressed now, is moving right now, at the speed of electronic deposit transfer, or AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT and it behooves McCain to work on this, because its effects are going to become apparent AFTER he assumes the Presidency, so he may as well help forge something that will work, so that he doesn’t have to deal with the mess later… But, the Dems control both sides of the house, so let’s see what their choice is…. Load a poison pill when they come to the absolute conclusion that B.O. isn’t going to win so that they can cut off the citizens noses to spite their faces (Something like what Piyush is doing while he begs for money and ignores STRONGCONCRETE)? Yes, our politicians are crazy……. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail…. I am so tired of all those old clichés, but their value and importance are seemingly timeless, and that is the difference between prudence and fad…. Fads sort of fade away, sort of like disco, and sort of like rap is fixing to do, which is fade into relative obscurity…. But the damaging effects of Rap is seen in every urban center around the nation…… Yeah, I like Hank Williams, he will never go out of style amongst sound and practical thinkers……… Written by
on 9/27/2008
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The cleaning lady has more wisdom in her little finger than the current resident of the White House. Written by Richard P.
on 9/27/2008
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Well Mr. Robert Desmarais Sullivan, that is why the cleaning lady is the cleaning lady instead of a CEO, and that is why T-duhhhhhhhhhb wouldn't know what to do with 500K..... Even if the taxpayer put it in his hands and told him to do something good with it for the people....... Two things at once? well, next time you see the cleaning lady ask her if she applies her makeup at the same time as she wipes her ass on the toilet..... Everyone knows you first have to get the paperwork done before attempting anything else... Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!!!! Written by
on 9/27/2008
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McCain and Mr. B.O. are both US Senators and they are getting paid to do a job representing their respective states. However we have seen subsidized presidential campaigning. Both candidates have missed to many days in Congress, but maybe we have something here. Since you can run for president and shirk your responsibilities as a public servant why do they have to meet as often as they do? Let's change Congress to once every two years having a 120 day session, that way they can't screw us like they have done with this Freddie/Fannie/AIG financial debacle. I am glad McCain went back to Washigton and I didn't expect Mr. B.O. to be there becasue he has been politicking for Prez more than he has been serving the people of Illinois. Oh, and having a minister pray over you does not turn you into a witch hunter, but going to Rev. Wright's services for 20 years and saying you never heard the vile racisim, etc. shows me you don't need to be president. You're either lieing or you don't pay attention or you sleep in church alot or you're lieing. Written by Sid
on 9/27/2008
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I don't see Senator McCain's ploys as sound strategies. As the cleaning-lady at my high school said this morning, 'If he thinks he can't do two things at once, how can he want to be president?' She, for one, is not fooled by McCain's shenanigans.... As for the financial crisis, one of my students this morning observed that George Bush's speech on the crisis was the same one he's been giving on terrorism. She said that we would hear that, if we just replaced 'crisis' with 'terrorism' every time.... It seems to me that it would be better just to let the chips fall where they may, if the Bush plan is the only one. I would rather live through the dismal years with the collapse of these bloated institutions than give so much money and power to Wall Street. Where's the bailout for the people losing their houses?... Anyway, the Bush plan is not the only possibility. There is a way to require a moratorium on mortgages, strict accounting for the good loans and the trash, leaving the trash to the investors, not to the public.... Finally, those who see in Gov. Palin a future president must be self-flagellators. After all the outcry about Senator Obama's pastor, no one is pointing out that Gov. Palin believes she is governor because her pastor blessed her, the same pastor whose primary claim to fame was that he had identified a witch and caused her exile in an African country. The US had an experience with witch-hunters once before, and it wasn't too happy, so there's no way I'm going to live in a country that elects witch-hunters as president. Even though I'm too old to stand the cold, I'd apply for citizenship in Canada first. Written by Robert Desmarais Sullivan
on 9/27/2008
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I absolutely agree with Senator John McCain when he decided to postpone a ‘debate’ or some time on the campaign trail to tend to his ‘Senatorial’ duties…….. He has his priorities in the right place… Because whatever is going to be said and done, will be in effect a month or two before he even takes office… I believe that much like the Chrysler bailout, it is prudent, and in the best interests of the United States of America to step in and salvage what can be salvaged out of this market mess……. I am not going to get into a doomsday scenario, because all of the abstracts are not a static condition that can be predicted with 100% reliability… However……………….. First, where can the money come from? Aside from the instruments that can be salvaged, which are still capable of generating financial capital, where can auxiliary capital be found? The Federal Reserve………………….. But only to a certain extent, it is needed for disbursement of other needs around the country as well as around the globe……. Sooo……….. A percentage of each and every States sales tax revenues currently being generated on a day by day basis…. States get Federal help, this is a national problem, I believe in the freedom of the States, and the position of leadership of the Feds… States can opt not to contribute state sales tax percentages, and they can also do without federal help as this is being taken care of….. and they can do without the additional that is generated as well…. Because this is simply a business venture, sort of like Chrysler, and if the States spent their tax dollars foolishly and have nothing in reserve in order to help out the nation which they are a part of as well, well then, oh wellllllllll……… The fourth source? The Stock market….. A 2%, 3%, 4%, whatever fee attached to the gross of each market transaction until a combination arrived upon by the monies returned by the primary financial instruments that are being bailed out AND the stock market amounts to a 2.5:01 return to the participating states/Federal Government…. In certain instances, especially when it is blatant properties default, such as Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, etc., then the State’s property taxes collected can be directed towards the problem much in the same way that the state sales taxes are being directed…. States choice again……….. The amounts required for payback and bailout along with the return should be attainable within perhaps a 6 month time period, availing additional money on the playing field for loans that are needed in other ‘sound’ sectors during that time frame ….. And of course there should be regulation in as far as capital percentages required to obtain a loan in the future… In other words, no one goes to a card game and gambles on credit, unless that person is a fool…… And if the individual states have to cut back on services, oh well…. Conserve or contribute, or desire less is all I can say…………. McCain in ’09……. We could do better, but the alternatives dictate that we could do worse……………….. Written by
on 9/26/2008
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"McCain needs to reestablish momentum and take the initiative from Obama. It might start tonight in a debate ".... (and..... it might snow in New Orleans...) But, Jeff- I love your tone of defeat, saying, "it will be a big victory for the Illinois Senator and the dynamics of the race will not change. At this point, no change in the race is good news for Obama" ... I admire your admission. Written by KjunLady
on 9/26/2008
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Who knew that John McCain was such a gambler? In this campaign, he has rolled the dice on many occasions. 
