I've got to believe that this is going to be the stuff of ads this fall. Do we really want people in this party to control both the Congress and the White House?
Unfortunately, "profit" is a dirty word to John McCain as well. Let's hope some of his advisors can keep him under control.
[Update later afternoon]
Heh. Will Obama make Maxine Waters his Secretary of Energy?
[Update a few minutes later]
Geez. Maybe she'll be energy secretary no matter who wins. John McCain:
Um, I don't like obscene profits being made anywhere-and I'd be glad to look not just at the windfall profits tax-that's not what bothers me-but we should look at any incentives that we are giving to people, that or industries or corporations that are distorting the market.
And this guy calls himself a "Reagan conservative"?
I think that Mickey has it right. Republicans are suckers.
This is fundamental education that is not being taught to our children. McCain's advisors aren't the problem (well, they are A problem of a different sort.) I'm in awe of the stupidity of the voting public (how can any of these fools get more than a few percent of the vote???)
Then I realize. They spent twelve years and more learning to be stupid by those that hate liberty.
This is the fight we are losing.
It's worse than that. We publicly fund the education and recruitment of our enemies and have no will to do what must be done to reduce the threat.
This will be the death of us.
If only a coup was not so morally repugnant to our military. Seriously. We need to strip citizenship away from seditious bastards and deport them regardless of the economic hit and bankrupt outrage we might have to bare. Not going to happen of course, but I'm disgusted with politicians pandering away this country.
Can we make them take a test for understanding economics before they get on the ballot?
I'm feeling like Burt Lancaster in October!
Yes, this is an existential threat... just long, drawn out and painful. If I weren't so shy, I'd tell ya what I really think!!!
"We ... have no will to do what must be done to reduce the threat. ... If only a coup was not so morally repugnant to our military."
This is the reason I'm skeptical of the second amendment. As I understand it, the premise behind this amendment is that if a truly terrible government takes over, the people can rise up and violently overthrow it. However, I don't see that happening.
You and I would probably agree that there have been some nightmare presidents in office lately. We might disagree about who they are - I would say Bush 43, you might say Carter or Clinton - but we both think that there were some politicians that needed overthrowing. However, this hasn't happened. The second amendment is supposed to protect Americans from bad government, but it isn't working. When a leader does get killed, it's usually a liberal (like 2 Kennedys, 3 Gandhis, Benazir Bhutto, and MLK).
I acknowledge that a bad government is not the only threat to "the security of a free State".
Christ, give me a break. If you think Bush or Clinton were so bad that armed revolution is the correct response, you need to get a grip. Go visit Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or Communist China, or Cuba, or North Korea, or maybe read up on Stalinist Russia to learn what a government is like that really needs armed revolt.
Revolt is ugly. Not just because people die in huge swathes, but because it viciously polarizes the people, and, except in very unusual circumstances with very unusual people (e.g. the Americans in 1776) the revolution tends to be followed by a period of even worse oppression (cf. the USSR in the 1920s, France in the 1790s, South Africa now, Communist China in the 1950s and 60s, and on and depressingly on).
If there's anything really wrong with modern US politics, I'd say it's this generalized trend to hysterical thinking.
OMFG! Bush started a war in Iraq that has cost raised the annual death rate for US soldiers from 0.5% to 0.75%! And cost almost as much as we spend on cosmetics each year! Death is too good for him!
Holy Christ! If our Chicago brutha isn't elected, it means we're goin' straight back to Jim Crow. Fuck! Without Hillary and HilaryCare we're all going to die squalidly, like animals, of untreated polio and plague, while Dick Cheney and his oil buddies laugh and swill chablis.
Et cetera. For the richest, most pampered, freest citizens on the face of the planet to behave like a pack of scaredy-pants children is disgraceful.
You and I would probably agree that there have been some nightmare presidents in office lately. We might disagree about who they are - I would say Bush 43, you might say Carter or Clinton - but we both think that there were some politicians that needed overthrowing. However, this hasn't happened.
It hasn't happened because we haven't had any government recently that needed removing so badly that a sufficiently large number of people thought that a violent overthrow was necessary. That's why we have elections.
It would take a lot more than the depredations of a Bill Clinton (or a George Bush, in the fantasies of some) to do so. The situation would only arise if a president tried to (for example) refuse to leave office after an election, or engaged in actual tyrannical acts (like mass door-to-door searches, or arrests). The last time we had a president like that was Woodrow Wilson, though we never found out what would have happened had he lost an election, due to his disabling stroke.
And the Second Amendment was never meant to protect the right of assassins. Assassinating a president is not overthrowing the government. The government is not a man. That's one of the key elements of our constitutional system.
Doesn't it amaze you Ashley that the two Kennedy's were killed by the liberals best friends? JFK by a real life Communist fellow traveler and RFK by the libs new best friend, a Palestinian.
O, and don't call JFK a liberal. Isn't true.
O, and don't call JFK a liberal. Isn't true.
Laugh. Mark Whittington, I presume? :-)
Well, why not? Bill Clinton claimed he was a Reagan conservative, and Bush claims he's a conservative, so you might as well toss John, Bobby, and Ted in the pot, too. :-)
There is always Ron Paul and Bob Barr
McCain said "we need to look at incentives that are distorting tha market". Exactly! Not whther A or B or C is making a lot of money, but whether the state is creating windfall profits by imposing market distortions. Like subsidies for corn ethanol, barriers against sugar ethanol imports, mandates for "renewable energy", etc.
You got a problem with taking a hard, critical look at such policies?
You got a problem with taking a hard, critical look at such policies?
Of course not. I just wish that I could believe that that's all that McCain meant, given his rhetoric about "obscene profits." That phrase alway indicates to me that someone is against profits in general. It's not like the oil industry has all that high a margin compared to many others.