Friday, August 22, 2008
Georgia
There is absolutely no truth in the rumour that most Americans think that the Georgia that the Russians have invaded is the one sandwiched between Florida and South Carolina. This is not why John McCain is suddenly ahead of Obama in the opinion polls. However, a real life cold-war confrontation has made many Americans plump for a Viet-nam veteran rather than the first-term senator from Illinois. If he chose Hillary as his running-mate would he fare better? Certainly the blue-collar vote does not seem enthusiastic about the eloquent egghead.
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8 comments:
Today's polls have gone back in Obama's favor. I think the reality is that it's a statistical tie.
incidentally the improvement that McCain has had has coincided with him signing Team Rove and serious negative campaigning for the past month. I guess this is the big driver rather than the Georgia thing.
But Obama's fighting back, not so hard when you've been slimed as an "elitist" by some old, white dude, who's the son and grandson of admirals, who thinks you ain't rich until you're pulling $5m a year, who can't remember how many homes he owns, and left his wife for a brewery heiress after she had a crippling auto smash.
This is going to get nasty.
American politics can be strange, as is true of most of politics, but the real discrepency as I see is that Americans have to decide what path they wish to choose...Obama sound bites are 'fun" because fresh ideas and change are always nice to contemplate, especially when things have been dreary, but I remain bemused by the types of people who gravitate to him.
I can certainly understand why my 18 yo old niece is behind him, but i can't understand why her mother (who knows full well how much taxes my brother pays and how hard he must work) supports a party whose stated goals and intentions seem to be to ratchet up the entitlements that are drowning us by shifting wealth and income from the producers to those at the bottom of the scale.
The great thing about the USA has always been our openness and opportunity.
We definitely need a social safety net for those people who really need it, but we don't need to ratchet it up and up forevermore, expecting the current generation of young workers and producers to keep paying for more and more while they look to receive less and less.
Both of my children had the advantage of good educations. They work very hard and, yes, they are well compensated. It pains me to think hat the Democrat's master plan is to place ever increasing burdens on them while redistributing their hard earned income.
If you teach a man to fish, he will learn how to feed himself in the future. If all you do is confiscate the fisherman's catch and give it to someone else, the recipient has no incentive to work.
The American government needs a new direction (not the Obama train) and needs to spend money helping those in need and improving our infrastructure and other capabilities (eg, Energy production/conservation) for the future.
It seems that most of Europe is in a mess because of it's entitlements and dependence on Russian oil and natural gas...I hope that we in the USA do not continue down that path.
Believe me, we know which Georgia is in the news...we just don't know what to do about it.
DWCLL
Or a choice between McCain following exactly the same failed policies as Bush which have privileged 5% of the population, run up the biggest budget deficit in history and which has created welfare dependency for the super rich and large corporations. And have, scandalously, created a travesty of Christianity to get the poor to keep voting it. Trouble is now the economy is in the dumpster the "Jesus wants you for a Republican" schtick won't play.
In contrast Obama proposes a tax cut for everyone earning under $75k and only raising them on earnings in excess of $250k. To contextualize US median household income was $46k and $250k are the household earnings of the top 2-3% of the population (figures from the US Census Bureau)
So us blue collar guys win - and most of us aren't stupid enough not to spot this. In the upper midwest states with the blue collar plurality - Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Penn, Ohio we know it, which is why Obama's leading here and probably why he'll win, come November.
This isn't really the place for political dialogue, but Mr. Obama's proposed tax strategy includes refundable tax credits for lower income individuals and tax increases for those who already are paying the bulk of the income taxes...in other words confiscating more money from those with to give it away to those without. In case you didn't understand a refundable tax credit means that an individual entitled to a refundable $1,000 tax credit but pays only $100 in income tax gets a check for $900. Just how are we going to pay for this when we need to rebuild our infrastructure and prepare for the future?
To complain about 'rich white dude' is racist.
One anonymous poster is correct in that this isn't the proper venue for American politics.
I do feel sorry for Americans who somehow think that having the government take over health care will lead to improvements! What does government do well? Education? No. Roads and bridges? No, they are falling apart.
Once health care is a part of the general budget, now drugs such as rituximab and Campath are competing with school glue and textbooks.
"It's for the children!" has a more resonate ring than, "It's for old white dudes!"
Look to the acor list and elsewhere and see what drugs will not be available suddenly for CLL. Goodbye rituximab! Goodbye Campath! Hello chlorambucil! Hello St. John's Wort!
The only good thing about Obamacare is that the Canadians would no longer be able to jump the socialist line by motoring over the border! Too funny!
I wouldn't be too sure about the confusion between the state of Georgia and the Republic of Georgia.
I will state with absolute certainty that at least 95% of Americans could not pick out Georgia or South Ossetia on a map. A sizable minority cannot find the Pacific Ocean on a map. A smaller but still embarrassing number cannot locate the United States on a map. Presumably most Americans realize we are on a planet in the solar system.
Since Mr. Obama has picked an admitted plagiarizer as his running mate, and one who goes on, and on, and on, it will make for a fun race.
To be honest, I don't like either candidate. What duds.
Joe Biden? Famous over here for plagiarizing Neil Kinnock of all people. It's not so much the copying as whom he copied. And you say he's known for going on and on? That's Kinnock to a 'T'. Not called the 'Welsh Windbag' for nothing.
Georgia is named after the Turkish Saint George, who happens to be the patron saint of England too. When we invited the Elector of Hannover over to sustain the Protestant succession in the face of various Scottish Catholic Pretenders we established the tradition for several King Georges (6 so far), one of whom (actually the second) had the English settlement on the South East coast of America named after him.
The population of the state of Gorgia is twice the population of the country. They played an important part in both the American revolution and the civil war. Their rebellion was fueled by having been settled by many non-Anglican protestants, who had objected to having had the establishment of the Church of England inposed. During the War, many African-Americans defected to the British, and were given their freedom before being resettled in the Caribbean. I wonder if Ussain Bolt's ancestors were among them? Both John Wesley and George Whitefield worked as missionaries in Georgia.
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