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This Is What Democracy Looks Like
www.NationalView.org's Note From a Madman
October 13, 2008
Questions Have Many Parts
Here's a question which John McCain has to answer:
If McCain had warned about the markets' crashing more than two years ago, then
why would he have urged Congress to pass President Bush's Social Security
Privatization Plan over and over again? Why would McCain still be insisting that
"personal accounts" - a.k.a. privatization - be a key to his economic plan still
on his web site?
"John McCain supports supplementing the current Social Security system with
personal accounts,"
-JohnMcCain.com (http://www.johnmccain.com/Issues/JobsforAmerica/reform.htm)
Certainly this is a question which should be asked during the next presidential
debate.
-Noah Greenberg
McCain-Onomics
If it's true that slow and steady wins the race what does herky-jerky and all
over the place get you?
It gets you a 26-year seat in the US Senate representing Arizona; it gets you
the state house in Alaska; and it gets you the Republican Party's nomination for
President and Vice President of the United States.
After last Tuesday Night's Presidential debate, the McCain-water has been so
muddied that it's hard to tell where the Candidate Formerly Known as The
Maverick stands on any issue these days, let alone the economy. While attempting
to show off his "Liberal" side during the debate, McCain offered up his plan to
spend an additional $300 billion of our hard-earned US tax dollars on bailing
out those who no longer can afford to pay their mortgages.
We're all left to answer the question: Will the real John McCain please stand
up?
The new McCain mortgage bailout bill (for lack of a better name) would have a
President McCain (a thought so scary that I won't mention it again) order - yes,
"order" - whoever is unlucky enough to become his Secretary of the Treasury (can
you say Secretary Phil Gramm?) to purchase the mortgages of those who borrowed
money to purchase their inflated-value homes and then re-work the loans to allow
those people to stay in those homes, at taxpayer expense.
That's us, folks (even us folksy folks) - the US middle-class taxpayer.
And while he's paying one-hundred cents on every dollar borrowed to the lenders
- a.k.a the McBush "base of haves and have mores" who own the lending companies
- he is going to be giving yet another huge tax break (somewhere in the $300
billion range) to those at the very top who caused this huge, new Great
Depression (if that's where we end up). And while he is offering up these giant
tax breaks to the top one-percent of us, McCain is going to cut the corporate
tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.
After McCain cuts that rate to benefit his true "base", he's going to finance a
$5,000 per family health care tax rebate, which will cost an additional $700
billion per year, by taxing already shrinking employer-paid contribution to our
$12,000 per year health care bill.
So if Big Business is getting this big tax break; and the top one-percent is
getting another $300 billion in tax breaks; guess who's getting stuck with the
bill?
You and I, that's who.
This is a plan that, had a Democrat suggested it, would have had the whole
Republican National Committee, Fox News Channel and any true fiscal
Conservatives manning their gunning stations. In short, it would have been a
presidential-race game-changer.
McCain in this election has gone from Maverick to Conservative to NeoCon and now
to outer-space!
Cafeteria plans, as they apply to health care insurance, refers to the practice
of employees paying their portion for health care prior to taxes being taken out
of their salaries. If McCain has his way, we wouldn't only be taxed on the
employer-paid portion of our health care insurance, we would be taxed on those
other, formerly pre-tax dollars as well.
It's a penalty for both employers and employees alike and will end up costing
some 20 million Americans any health care their employers provide towards their
health care coverage. In short, McCain wants to take that benefit - the single
only benefit which employer-based health care coverage carries - away and pay
for health care by taxing - you guessed it - health care.
And while McCain is taxing our health care he has promised to trim some $1.3
trillion in benefits from Medicare.
If McCain gets to the White House the victors shall not only get to keep the
spoils they already have, but they'll get more and more of the spoils until
there's nothing left.
And we're getting close to that, aren't we?
-Noah Greenberg
Rumors
Here's one worth knowing:
The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit
in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set
him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has
concealed his religion.”
That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the
ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.
The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com,
and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail
messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about
Mr. Obama’s background.
Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting,
“I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.
Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyber-whisper
campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports,
with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.
But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched
by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into
the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without
challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.
An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews
with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of
scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity —
some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers
and judges in three states over more than 30 years.
He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked
in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect
manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose
character.”
Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of
lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both
parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and
2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his
anti-Obama Web site and press releases.
Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama
rumors.
“Everybody uses my research as a takeoff point,” Mr. Martin said, adding,
however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own
fantasies.”
As for his background, he said: “I’m a colorful person. There’s always somebody
who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”
When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on
“Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said Mr. Martin was
clearly expressing his opinion and not necessarily fact.
It was not Mr. Martin’s first turn on national television. The CBS News program
“48 Hours” in 1993 devoted an hour-long program to what it called his prolific
filing of frivolous lawsuits. He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred
him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.
He prepared to run as a Democrat for Congress in Connecticut, where paperwork
for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew
power.” He ran as a Republican for the Florida State Senate and the United
States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he aired a
television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of using
cocaine.
In the 1990s, Mr. Martin was jailed in a case in Florida involving a physical
altercation.
His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack —
updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases — amazes those from
his past.
“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the
Florida Republican Party, whom Mr. Martin sued for refusing to support him. Mr.
Slade said Mr. Martin was driven like “a run-over dog, but he’s fearless.”
Given Mr. Obama’s unusual background, which was the focus of his first book, it
was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html?hp
-Robert Scardapane
In response to, In response to, "What frightened me most about the "debate"
(hardly) in Nashville was when McCain said we would have to give up some
entitlements. A lot of people watching do not realize that Social Security and
MEDICARE are entitlements," Casey Sweet writes:
Don't be so sure people did not understand what McCain's words implied about
reduced benefits. You will be happy to know what a 60 year old cousin of mine in
NH said after the debate. He told me there is absolutely no way he would vote
for McCain after the debate and he thought he was going to have too since he is
a registered independent, but almost always votes republican - Bush twice.
He was not happy about McCain and his comments about reducing entitlements
sealed the deal for his vote to go to Obama. I expect his wife's to follow. This
is a true miracle that I expect is duplicating many times across the U.S.
Race can be influential in NH with a 95%+ white population, but when you are
drowning you don't refuse a rope because of color. This election is forcing
people to be more serious and thoughtful in their consideration (assuming they
are not 'low info voters' who want to be told how to vote) which can only be a
benefit to democrats.
Send your comments to: NationalView@aol.com
-Noah Greenberg