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Sorry Dad
| Fri, 10-10-2008 - 12:57pm |
Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, is supporting Obama:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama

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"But I still think ignorance and bigotry should not be tolerated at all."
I completely agree.
at all.>
So very true. Their is enough blame for the economic meltdown to spread over both parties. But the issue of fueling ignorance and bigotry cannot be overlooked. There are some who are excited about republicans showing "emotion" at rallies. "kill him, terrorist and bomb Obama" are emotions? Nice try. It is unedited footage of hate and fear
Alicia, the party in power ALWAYS pays the price when the economy goes south, or I should say the party in the White House does. This is why Reagan beat Carter in 1980, there was a fear of Reagan and a perception that he was reckless but people voted their pocketbooks. They always do. This is why Bush 41 lost as well, and of course why Hoover lost.
People are angry because of the inequality in this society. The top tax rate after World War II was 91% and this country prospered, it was the mightiest economy on earth, however, over the past 20 to 30 years the right has been drumbeating the unfairness of this. As a result today Joe Six Pack watches CEOs run companies into the ground, their jobs and pensions vanish, while the CEOs walk away with golden parachutes worth hundreds of millions of dollars and pay little to no taxes because of tax shelters. People were told that pensions were old fashioned and out of date and 401ks would let them be part of the ownership society, and make them millionaires. Instead their 401ks are essentially being wiped out by circumstances that people have no control over. As a result, yes, they are angry.
The overall biggest contributing factors to the current crisis are twofold. Number 1, Greenspan never should have left interest rates at 1% for 3 years. This more than anything else opened the door to ridiculously low adjustable mortgage rates that became unafordable when rates rose (as they always do, in a cyclical manor).
The other problem is society itself. There is a bad combination in this society of mindless consumerism, a feeling that no matter what one has it's never enough, and one needs to grasp and grasp and grasp for more. Advertising more than anything else pushes this. I don't know if you remember the DeBoars in the early 90s, they adopted a little girl and the birth mother decided she wanted her back, and it turned into an ugly court case.
Well, they lived here in town, about 5 miles fro where I live. They lived in a very modest Cape Cod in a neighborhood of very modest Cape Cods. When TV made a movie about this, though, suddenly they were living in a 3,000 sq ft McMansion. A modest house was most likely unacceptable to both TV and their advertisers. The message is always to want more than you can possibly have, and we buy into it.
The second factor is a belief, over the past 20 to 30 years, that one can get something for nothing, or have it all. To my mind Reagan was most responsible for this, he sold the notion that we could have massive tax cuts and that budgets would magically be balanced, that we could have it all painlessly. He basically threw the fiscal conservativism that the Republican Party always believed in out the window. Today we as a society are looking for high tech bubbles, real estate bubbles, any way possible to get rich quick with no effort, pain or discipline.
Inequality in a society is dangerous, it always leads to trouble, it has in the past and always will in the future. The right has inadvertently encouraged inequality, higher taxes were always the price the wealthy paid for financial benefits available to those with money but not to anyone else. Today though the inequalities of society are labeled "fair" by the right, and overall this is making people angrier and angrier.
dablacksox
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
dablacksox
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
dablacksox
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
dablacksox
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.---Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
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