It’s hilarious how the current desperation-based attack on Sen. Obama is how he, in concert with Reid and Pelosi, will create a left-wing socialist majority that will crush America.
First off the attack using who will be in control of congress is among the most desperate, a version of it was used in 2006 when cons saw the writing on the wall and tried to make the election about Pelosi being speaker (Sean Hannity said “There are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of ‘em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn’t become the speaker”).
Secondly, Bill Clinton was president for eight years. In that time we nationalized zero industries. Under George W. Bush? Well… we own Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and are becoming shareholders in insurance companies and banks. Funny thing.
Freaking socialist cons.
Oliver, didn’t you get the memo?
Bush is not a real conservative. McCain, who used to be a RINO, is now the definition of true conservative but only because Sarah Palin is the second coming of Reagan. For now.
The other compare-contrast thing I’ve been enjoying watching is the new conservative idea that if the underlying act isn’t a crime, then lying to the government about what you’ve done shouldn’t be a crime either. Remember during the Clinton impeachment, when one Republican after another got up to intone, “It’s not the sex, it’s the lying,” to emphasize how awful it was for an American to lie about something it was legal for him to do? They knew they couldn’t prosecute him for what he did with Monica Lewinsky, so they prosecuted him for lying/ misleading about it.
In the Scooter Libby trial, obstruction of justice suddenly wasn’t an acceptable charge because it was being made against a Republican. But I foresee much more coming along, as with this fevered article about how the DOJ is “twisting civil rights statutes to suppress perfectly legal political activity.” A Republican politician was being investigated for voter suppression, and in the course of the investigation, he lied and misled about his role in a mailer. The mailer itself appears to have been legal, or close enough that it wouldn’t be possible to get a conviction on it. However, the lying still is a crime. When the feds show up at your door, you either tell the truth, the whole truth or nothing but the truth, or you claim your 5th Amendment rights and refuse to say anything without a lawyer present and immunity from prosecution.
I am finding the humor of tuff on crime, law’n'order conservatives suddenly declaring that someone who lies to law enforcement shouldn’t get into trouble for it so long as he lied about something that wouldn’t have gotten him prosecuted in the first place.
Of all the Conservative “thinking” out there these days, I have to agree that calling Obama a socialist is really the funniest and most idiotic line of attack I can imagine. Bush just allowed our banking system to be partially privatized, and this is the _literal_definition of what Communism was all about. He also allowed for the redistribution of hundreds of billions of tax-payers’ dollars to go into the coffers of select Wall Street firms.
Eight years of a Republican president plus six years of a Republican dominated Congress, and this is what you get: actual, literal Communism. Not hyperbole, not smears, but the Fed actually buying up crucial parts of the private sector financial industry.
I can understand why a conservative wouldn’t vote Obama, but how could they in any good conscience vote Republican ever again either? Bush II has begun the communilization of our national economy. Not Clinton, but Bush.
*not partially privatized, but partially Federalized, excuse me.
The last time we had eight years of Democratic control of the Presidency, the senate and the House, we went to the moon. Literally.
The last time we had eight years of Republican control of the Presidency, the senate and the House, we went into the Great Depression.
Which is scarier?
Eisenhower’s top tax rate was 91 percent. Nixon’s was 70 percent and Obama’s will be 39 but he’s a “Marxist” according to Glenn Beck
Giving tax money to rich people = “Good economics”
Giving tax money to any else = Socialist
Socialism for rich = Good
Socialism for anyone else = Bad
Rethugs and logic?
No relation
Acting like the last 8 years of Bush never happened is now a matter of survival for the Republican douchenozzles that supported this assclown through every major screw-up of his presidency. Now they all have to act like they never heard of the guy, and if they did, that they certainly opposed all that irresponsible borrow-and-spending.
At this point, nationalizing the banks would be better than leaving things as they are. After all, if you are going to have to bail them out every 25 years or so when things get bad, you could at least earn the profits when things are good.
Speaking of Nixon, McCain’s big idea for the bailout bill was that it include a wage control: no company receiving government assistance was allowed to pay an employee more than $400k. Apparently when a company is in deep shit, its past management has shown their incompetence and it desperately needs to attract new talent, the way to get good management is have a law that bars paying those folks what they would get to run a healthy company — a much less stressful, demanding job.
That’s the trouble with McCain — he’s not a useful, intelligent opposition to keep Democrats from going amok with excessive government intervention into the basics of the economy. He has no political principles, just an alleged personal sense of honor, so he rushes toward whatever he thinks will be popular. When Obama sponsored a bill for ADVISORY shareholder votes on the sole issue of executive compensation, McCain ignored the legislation. Now that even conservatives are expressing concern about exec comp, McCain’s suddenly proposing that there be BINDING shareholder votes on specific decisions made by the board, and not just on exec comp but on issues that require much greater familiarity with the company than almost any shareholder would have, such as how much to allocate for research & development. In other words, he wants to gut corporate law’s division between ownership and decision-making, which has served Anglo-American law reasonably well for, oh, several centuries.
As a moderate on economic issues, I ought to be one of the voters scared of the idea of total Democratic control of both houses and the White House. Unfortunately, McCain is not positioning himself as a genuine economic conservative; he’s just a guy willing to say whatever it takes to get votes.
One of O-Dub’s news links above about Obama’s visit to a barbecue joint in NC also blows my mind. A local pastor said he liked Obama, but would vote McCain because he believes in “smaller government.”
Huh? Republicans and smaller government? The Fed (even if you take out military spending) is bigger than it’s ever been thanks to Bush II. The Republican party is nothing but spend, spend, spend and increase the size of government at every opportunity. Difference is, instead of raising taxes, they’re just going to leave it up to your grandchildren to pay the bill.
You know who made government smaller by cutting wellfare entitlements? A Democrat whose name rhymes with “Jill Jinton.”
Jaim, don’t you mean Jepublican Jongress?
I love the smell irony in the morning.
“Arab”
“terrorist”
“Muslim”
“unpatriotic”
“Socialist”
(why don’t people just come out and say it- “Black”)?
“It’s hilarious how the current desperation-based attack on Sen. Obama is how he, in concert with Reid and Pelosi, will create a left-wing socialist majority that will crush America.”
What’s not so hilarious is that it seems to be sticking. I’ve talked about this before. I have several conservative friends who a year, year and a half ago, said Obama was the one Democrat they could support. He was sincere and wasn’t just another politician. Over time, that started to change, and they started echoing the talking points. This past weekend at lunch, it was the socialist takeover is coming.
Wow, Sarah Palin is the second Reagan.
Yeah, sure. How about the Hugo Chavez of the North: Oil money fills her state coffers and all she can spout is “Drill, Baby, Drill” and keep giving her constituents more Tax Rebates which are really bribes from Big Oil.
“W” Bush? Only made money from Govt. Socializing property so he could make Private Profits off the Eminent-Domained land given to his Texas Ranger’s stadium. Privatize Profits, Socialize Costs!
Obama, worked hard in school with little help from rich parents and had to get loans to pay for his education.
Who’s the socialist here?
Jaim wrote:
“…The Fed (even if you take out military spending) is bigger than it’s ever been thanks to Bush II…”
Though I know you know this Jaim, the Federal Reserve is not a part of the United States government. The misleading name causes some to think so. That said, I agree with you, that it is the GOP (the Reagan Years and “Star Wars”, Bush II) that leads us into debt.
It’s not like we shouldn’t have expected McCain to go negative, or the race to tighten in the next few weeks. It always happens, and it always tightens. It bothers me, as a person who respects McCain, to see him throwing around these kinds of labels.
Where Palin is concerned…who gives a rat’s ***. She’s as dumb as a stump and does not know any better. (I’d almost guarantee she couldn’t tell you who wrote the Communist Manifesto.)
Pretty much *any* kind of taxation is a distribution of wealth, which is why this label of “socialism,” is absolutely laughable. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, Bill Clinton had a very similar economic tax strategy back in 1992.
If I were Obama, I’d simply tell the American voters, that there are a whole lot of Americans out there who’d prefer we not distribute OUR tax dollars to the mess in Iraq when they, themselves, have a $70B surplus!
JK
I knew Palin was ill-informed, but I thought McCain at least had read a lot of history. I guess it was just military history — their latest line is that the bailout isn’t socialist because it’s necessary.
What leader seizing more power HASN’T said that the measures he advocates are necessary?
A declaration of emergency always is the best time for a government to institute policies that wouldn’t fly otherwise. It’s how Indira Gandhi could engage in mass sterilization of Indians. It’s how Russian Communists could justify their own repression of speech — they claimed the revolution was under constant threat from reactionaries. And it’s how Bush got the PATRIOT Act passed through a Congress with many members who never read it.
I wish McCain and Palin had the intellectual honesty to say, “Yeah, this is socialism and we don’t like it, but sometimes a little socialism may be necessary.” Then again, that would require them to believe that “intellectual” isn’t a dirty word and “honesty” is compatible with being a candidate.
I continue to hear the socialist word well after the election, from bitter die-hard republicans (who got us into this ditch). The absolute irony does not escape me at all. Bush’s carefree spending into deficit hell complete deregulation of the banking (environment, etc) has = meltdown to government intervention. It is Bush who goes into history bringing heavier gov’t control in the financial sector. If only he applied the adage “too much of a good thing is a bad thing” in the last 8 years.