To say that the nation stands at a crossroads would be an understatement. Seldom has the country faced the kind of stark choices it does today. The Iraqi War and national economic problems have hit with hurricane force. The nation’s mood is sour.
If there was ever a time for strong, consistent leadership, it is now.
Next Tuesday, the nation will decide who should be president for the next four years, John McCain or Barack Obama.
This Presidential election has been one of the most interesting and historic in many years. Whatever the outcome, it will be a bell-weather election.
Obama has a lot of good qualities. While the fact that he’s the first serious black candidate for president has gotten a lot of attention, his cool demeanor under pressure has been even more impressive.
In addition, Obama is the first candidate since Reagan who can stand before a crowd and make an articulate speech. The ability to communicate complex ideas is evidence that he possesses a competent and flexible mind.
Finally, the Obama campaign organization has been impressive with its depth and success. The ability to run such a seamless campaign suggests that Obama surrounded himself with competent people.
And yet, Obama isn’t ready to be president. He is a creature of government and has little understanding of how businesses operate or about the military. One gets the feeling that he holds an elitist disdain for both the private sector and the military. Besides government work, what has Obama ever really done?
That’s why John McCain is the best candidate to be the nation’s next president. During this era of economic and military turmoil, the nation needs someone who has a practical understanding of the real world.
For example, Obama’s tax plan is little more than a move to continue to tax society’s producers and redistribute those hard-earned dollars to society’s less productive members. Already somewhere between 30-40 percent of those who file tax returns don’t pay any federal taxes. Obama’s plan would shift that even more, to the point where a minority of the nation’s workers would be paying to keep up a majority of the nation’s citizens. And it would hit small businesses very hard. “Spread the wealth,” indeed.
McCain has real world experience in the military and understands both that system’s strengths and its flaws. Obama only has an outsider’s academic view, not real world experience.
In 1961, President John Kennedy spoke these famous words at his inauguration: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
Barack Obama is asking that question in reverse; he is asking the nation to elevate him to a self-perceived destiny. Obama’s slogan might be: “It’s all about me!”
John McCain is asking the question correctly; he seeks to put the nation’s interest before his own political ambitions. McCain’s view: “It’s all about this nation!”
That’s a major difference worth noting at the ballot box next Tuesday.
The "Spread the Wealth" comment is a red herring. As it is now the red states generally recieve more tax dollars per capita than the blue states. In fact the blue states tend to pay more in taxes than they receive back from the US government, and red states tend to receive more back than they pay in. When you talk about "spreading the wealth" -- do you take into account that every US citizen who lives in Alaska receives a hefty stipend from the federal government every year just for living there. Is this what you mean when you talk about redistribution of wealth!
McCain's erratic behavior of the last year in particular, and his flopping about on the issues from week to week leaves me with no confidence in him. I would have voted for the McCain of the 2000 election, but that is not the McCain we have today. Look around us today and you can see the economy is in ruins, the planet is in dire health, we're engaged in an ill conceived war based on deceit that is draining the life blood of our nation -- these are the consequences of eight years of Republican mismanagement. Enough!
Support McCain if you want to, but Obama will be the next president, and he will have a tough job ahead of him in correcting the grievous errors of the Bush/Cheney disaster. (Those two should have been impeached years ago for their war crimes.) It is long past time to get our country on the right track, and Obama will do just that.
Obama/Biden 2008!
Like lambs to the slaughter they will willingly follow Obama to their doom.
Unfortunately, their doom will bring ours as well.
And only when it is much, much too late, will they realize their mistake.
Thank You
John Warren
So you think Sarah Palin is competent to be President should something happen to John McCain 6 months into his presidency?
Well, we all have our opinions don't we?
As for Palin...hmmm, let me see now, which of them actually has ANY experience as the chief EXECUTIVE in ANY branch of government?
That would be...Obama? Ummm...NO.
Biden? Ummmm...NO.
Palen? Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding!!! Tell her what she's won, Johnny!
Yes, we do all have our opinions. And some of us actually have well informed, intelligent opinions.
Let's check back in 6 months and see which of one of us that is.
1) Palin thought that Africa was a country.
2) She claimed foreign policy experience because Russia is across the Bering Straight from remote parts of Alaska, and she serves as Governor there.
3) She claims to be a commoner, yet managed to spend $150,000 on clothes and another $25,000 on makeup in less than one month.
4) Her responses to Katie Couric's questions were pure blather.
And you think she is smarter than Barack Obama, the next president of the United States. You, my dear, are delusional.
I do not care if my VP is beautiful. I need my VP to be ready to handle the controls if the President goes down; Biden is the clear choice for VP of the United States. McCain lost a lot of support when he picked his running mate. He knocked me off the fence to the Obama side and this and several other moves caused my life-long Republican/ex-CFO/macro-economics PhD father-in-law to vote for Obama. That is huge! He wanted people to be blinded by Palin’s flash and "folksiness", he got it in people like you John. McCain is lucky to have the support he has and he is lucky there are a large number of Americans who are “easy sells”. Palin has no concept of the real world and no concept of what it means to be a participant and leader in national and global growth and progress. And I do not mean infrastructure development; I mean development of new approaches and new ways of looking at our role and position a growing global culture. And I do not mean progress in pushing our ideals and beliefs on others, I am speaking of progress in aid, assistance, truth, understanding, compassion, cooperation, and empathy, along with the conscious and intelligent growth and development of social, economic and cultural infrastructures. Biden is experienced and intuitive. He is tested and a tried and true patriot. He is approaching elder-statesman status and he has the unique ability to see American and its future terms of successful progress. Biden is “world aware”; he understands and has experience dealing with global issues and concerns. Palin offers none of this.
Right now we need to have a clear and precise focus on where we are and where we are going as a nation, a culture and a global leader. Obama is a visionary and a patriot. He has fought in no wars and has spent no time in a prison camp, but these are not the only prerequisites for being a patriot. He is willing to risk his life, knowing the potential consequences of being the first minority president, to rescue and enhance our wonderful and as-of-late misguided government and nation. He will battle to end the war in Iraq with as much honor as can be salvaged from the debacle that Bush, Cheney, and “American War Machine” created. He will battle to revive our economy from the lingering brink of disaster. He will fight to reclaim the position of respect and esteem that America needs so desperately to reclaim. He will fight to abate the culture of fear and distrust that has been fostered by McCain and the current establishment. Obama and Biden will fight for America and they will fight to prepare America for the future, they will fight to preserve our republic.
People are afraid of change, naturally. But, America is changing, the world is changing. This change will only continue to accelerate, it will be local, regional, national, and it will be global. It will be dramatic. However, it does not have to be threatening and America can become the better nation and better global citizen if we are willing to embrace that change and work with it instead of shun it and fight it.
When I think of Obama and change, I do not think of a person setting out and drastically changing our way of life. On the contrary, I believe that Obama sees the change that American and the world are undergoing with clear and perceptive eyes and he wants to preserve America’s greatness by planning and preparing for that change, by affecting that change for the better and by guiding our sails towards positive progress and through the straights of success…
Obama and Biden are willing to take on the responsibility of facing the change that is imminent in his country and in this world and they are willing to affect the correct courses and policies to help America continue to be strong and influential and to weather the storms that may well lay on the horizon.
Barack Obama was called a socialist at most every stop the Republican ticket made during the final weeks of the campaign. But when Obama arrives in Washington today for the first time as president-elect, the accused socialist will sit down with the real thing: President Bush.
John McCain said Obama is a socialist because he favors a progressive income tax system in which the rich pay more -- basically the way the tax code has worked for the last century or so. True socialism, however, is when the government owns the means of production - the sort of system the Bush administration has been setting up in its last months.
This morning, the administration announced that it will take a $40 billion ownership stake in AIG, part of $150 billion in taxpayer money going to the insurance giant. This would be the same AIG that, days after its first government bailout was announced earlier this fall, paid for a $440,000 retreat at the St. Regis Resort in California with golf outings and spa treatments.
But the socialism doesn't stop there. With the government already investing tens of billions in the banking industry, the auto industry, the airlines and homebuilders are pleading for their own federal handouts. No doubt all are entitled to some form of government ownership in the United Socialist States of America. But these are not the most deserving industries.
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You can criticize President Elect Obama as one who might redistribute the wealth, but please don't ingnore the reality of what the current Republican administration has been up to lately. That's real socialism, and Georgia's sitting Republican Senators are on board for that program.