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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (507250)	9/10/2012 2:10:59 AM
From: cnyndwllr	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793841

Uncle, I know, and I think you know, that you and I want the same things for this country. We want our country to be a healthy, just and successful land of opportunity. In addition, because of some similar experiences we shared we particularly want our military men and women to be treated with respect, utilized wisely and efficiently and to have their needs met. So when you ask why we put Obama up for election the two answers are clear to me....first Hillary Clinton and then, even more emphatically, John McCain and Sarah Palin. We don't get to choose among a great pool of people. Among those who had a chance I would have preferred Clinton from a domestic policy point of view but I was worried that the hate the Republicans had for her back then was too powerful and I envisioned a return of the waste of time in the last years of Bill Clinton's presidency. Even more importantly, however, Obama was the only candidate who had opposed the Iraq invasion at the outset and he was the only one who campaigned on the promise that he would end it sooner rather than later. McCain is a fine man but he sees dinks behind every flag and he's wild ass crazy to use our young men and women in combat. And, of course, Palin is far too pedestrian to even consider as a world leader. The choice, given the alternatives, was easy for me. With regard to your other point, taxing the rich will not help our soldiers directly. But giving more tax breaks to a wealthy minority who are now paying taxes at historical lows at a time when our country is drowning in debt while we have a huge bill coming as our population ages and our soldiers come home and need treatment, is a disaster. Taking in about 17% of GDP in taxes while we spend well over 20% of GDP is unsustainable. We can't tax the overburdened middle class much more without driving aggregate economic demand into the dirt, the poor have nothing worth taxing and the only way to make it up is to both cut unnecessary spending when the economy gets going and, additionally, to bring the taxes of the wealthy up closer to our historical norms. And this year we're given a choice once again of an Obama opponent who thinks we ought to flex our military muscle all over the world and who thinks that cutting the taxes of the rich, raising the pentagon budget and mysteriously finding a way to pay for all of it is both workable and advisable. That's why Obama will probably win the election. I just hope he's learned some things in the last few years and that he doesn't get hit with one problem after another in his next term. Ed