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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (53178)	10/26/2008 6:14:34 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224729

Rage from the unhinged left: Days of rage: There's something happening here by David Reinhard, The Oregonian Saturday October 25, 2008, What is happening to us? What explains the boorishness, hate and even violence that increasingly mark our politics? No, this isn't another prissy commentary on "negative" ads -- another high-sounding homily on how we ought to focus on "the issues," by which the writer means "the issues that I think voters should focus on." Nor is this a screed against demonstrations, however boisterous, or some young fools' lawn-sign stealing. There's no interest here in trampling on free-speech rights or spitting into the wind of what must be a rite of passage. What troubles me -- what should trouble us all -- is the outbreak of largely liberal intolerance we've seen over the last few elections, and especially this one. Something's happening here, and it's getting scary. We've had two 23-year-old males here tossing Molotov cocktails to burn down Gene Scrutton's John McCain sign in the Sellwood neighborhood. In Minnesota, graffiti messages ("u r a criminal resign or else") were spray-painted on the garage of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's St. Paul home. A 23-year-old Michigan man, a Democrat, has admitted to plotting to detonate a homemade bomb in the tunnels near the Republican convention. In the Washington, D.C., suburbs, a motel with a McCain sign on its lawn received threatening calls. In central Florida, the Republican headquarters manager told police he believed that his home with two McCain signs was shot up because of his support for McCain. It doesn't involve physical violence, threatened or real, but "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart's "[expletive] you" to Sarah Palin in a recent comedy (?) act suggests how far we've gone in the age of the unhinged. Yes, I know this stuff runs both ways. Here in Oregon, we had hoisting of an Obama cut-out at Newberg's George Fox University. The Washington Post reports that Obama signs in Alexandria, Va., were painted with racist epithets. We learned Friday that a McCain campaign worker's claim that she was beaten up and had the letter "B" cut into her face because her car had a McCain sticker was a hoax. Such deranged doings are just as appalling when it comes from the right, though my sense is that this hate-filled intolerance more often comes out of left field. I also know we're a big country, and a few goof-balls do not a national trend make. But I don't think I'm committing sociology based on a few incidents. We're talking about more than a few beer-addled goofballs here. A young friend of mine was working for the Bush campaign in 2004. One weekend he left his car outside a friend's Eugene house for safekeeping while he was out of town. Upon returning, he noticed the "W" sticker had been removed from his car. Hey, buddy, you were supposed to take care of my car, he said to his friend. Oh, yeah, his friend said, my father did that when he was here this weekend. He couldn't stand a student having a Bush sticker on his car. Now, mind you, this wasn't a practical joke. The father was dead serious, and he wasn't some ne'er-do-well with a six-pack of beer aboard. He was an immaculately credentialed Portland professional who also headed a major community organization. I love politics and public policy, but the ugliness, the anger, the coarseness and even the threats of violence I've experienced as a conservative opinion-writer in achingly "tolerant" Portland have contributed to my decision to leave the business after this election. My heart was starting to harden -- do we conservatives not have hearts, do we not bleed? -- and I didn't want that to happen. I joked at first about some of it. When a reader sent me my column covered with dried feces, I looked on the bright side. He could have said he wouldn't .... on my column. I took comfort in the fact law officers visited the Iraq War foe (a peace advocate!) and the liberal critic (a Portland public school teacher!) who threatened my family. But the constant expletive-laced rants, the nifty Nazi-Hitler-German references, the holier-than-thou hate for any opposing view from the half-informed -- well, it's not what our public discourse should be about. It wasn't in a better age. If I sometimes responded in kind (and I did), forgive me. What accounts for this rage? Maybe they just feel entitled to rule. (Dude, where's my country?) Maybe it's the Iraq War. Or George Bush, though many lefties have worked themselves into the same derangement syndrome over Palin. Maybe the cause is deeper. I don't know. I only know it's not a good thing for civil society.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (53178)	10/26/2008 6:27:05 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224729

ZOGBY: October 26, 2008: In today's single day of polling, it was 46% McCain to 49% Obama. McCain has moved his own numbers each of the three days and Obama has gone down from 54% to 50% to 49%. I have alluded before to this strange, magnetic pull that brings Obama down to 48% or 49%, a danger zone for him. McCain's gains are among white voters, where he now leads by 12 points, and with men, where he again has a healthy lead. There is still a lot of campaign to go.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (53178)	10/26/2008 11:50:52 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 224729

Significant Socialistic Spending is the sweet sweet remedy for Bitter Sickness of Capitalism Democratic presidential candidates are suggesting that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal is a good model for government policy today. Evidence, however, makes clear that poor people were principal victims of the New Deal. The evidence has been developed by dozens of economists -- including two Nobel Prize winners -- at Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the University of California (Berkeley) and University of Chicago, among other universities. New Deal programs were financed by tripling federal taxes from $1.6 billion in 1933 to $5.3 billion in 1940. Excise taxes, personal income taxes, inheritance taxes, corporate income taxes, holding company taxes and so-called "excess profits" taxes all went up. The most important source of New Deal revenue were excise taxes levied on alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, matches, candy, chewing gum, margarine, fruit juice, soft drinks, cars, tires (including tires on wheelchairs), telephone calls, movie tickets, playing cards, electricity, radios -- these and many other everyday things were subject to New Deal excise taxes, which meant that the New Deal was substantially financed by the middle class and poor people. Yes, to hear FDR's "Fireside Chats," one had to pay FDR excise taxes for a radio and electricity! New Deal taxes were major job destroyers during the 1930s, prolonging unemployment that averaged 17%. Higher business taxes meant that employers had less money for growth and jobs. Social Security excise taxes on payrolls made it more expensive for employers to hire people, which discouraged hiring. Other New Deal programs destroyed jobs, too. For example, the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) cut back production and forced wages above market levels, making it more expensive for employers to hire people - blacks alone were estimated to have lost some 500,000 jobs because of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) cut back farm production and devastated black tenant farmers who needed work. The National Labor Relations Act (1935) gave unions monopoly bargaining power in workplaces and led to violent strikes and compulsory unionization of mass production industries. Unions secured above-market wages, triggering big layoffs and helping to usher in the depression of 1938. FDR might not have intended to harm millions of poor people, but that's what happened. We should evaluate government policies according to their actual consequences, not their good intentions. Barack Obama's "change" is a recycling of the kinds of policies and rhetoric of the New Deal that prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s far beyond the duration of any depression before or since. These are the same kinds of liberal policies that led to double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates and rising unemployment during the Carter administration. Yet Senator John Kerry said he would push for an old-fashioned “Rooseveltian lift” of regulatory reforms and government spending. First it was Sen. Hillary Clinton who last month said, “Once we get through this immediate crisis, the country should look at some Great Depression-Era type of government entity to deal with it.” Now Sen. John Kerry says the “change” we need to deal with the current financial crisis s to reinstall President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” I guess none of these people have read or understand history.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (53178)	10/26/2008 11:51:20 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 224729

youtube.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (53178)	10/27/2008 6:09:45 AM
From: tonto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224729

That's a nice speech...of course, we all know that words are cheap, especially from lawyers and politicians.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (53178)	10/27/2008 6:26:32 AM
From: TideGlider	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224729

Stunning results in early voting in California. Smile redstaters Posted by: redalert Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 01:15PM CDT California has begun early voting already as well as mail-in balloting. The number of people who have gone in to vote in person has been extensive. The results so far prove what we had always suspected. The polls are being proven as totally unreliable. Although the results of early balloting have not been disclosed,of course,how many Republicans and how many Democrats have voted has been revealed. The results are simply shocking. The polls showed Barack Obama with an 18 point lead in California just a few days ago. The results thus far are the complete opposite. In the most liberal state in the entire country,the results are that 99,000 Republicans have voted and 96,000 Democrats voted. In the mail-in balloting the results so far are that 9,000 Democrats sent in their ballots and that 5,000 Republicans did so. So with nearly 210,000 people having voted,the Democrats have only a 1,000 vote advantage ! If we take the liberty of assuming that all Republicans will vote for John McCain and all Democrats will vote for Obama,then the race is incredibly close. I'm sure that Obama will eventually win in California,but if he is struggling here after he pushed so hard for early voting,then he will lose the election ! Everybody thought he would win California in a landslide,but so far anyway,it's very tight. That means that in the less liberal states he is in real trouble. Ignore the pundits. Forget the polls. Get out there and vote for John McCain. The results in California show the wisdom of Yogi Berra who said, "It's not over until it's over." redstate.com