Governor Palin’s Speech

I watched hockey mom / Governor of Alaska / vice-president nominee Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican convention last night. I have a few comments and questions.

Palin said, “Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speech-making, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things, and then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things”, but she never said what those great things were.  Maybe she will have some details in her next speech.

She said ‘I told the Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” on that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted to build a bridge, we were going to build it ourselves.” Can you give us our money back governor? According to the Boston Herald, she spent the money on “other projects” (my quotation marks).  Hmmm. Was it pork? Maybe she’ll let us know in her next speech.

Referring to Barack Obama she said, “This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word “victory,” except when he’s talking about his own campaign.” She gave her entire speech and never mentioned the word “Bush”. Even if at some point in the future we claim “victory” in Iraq, we must always remember that it is a war we didn’t have to fight. The President and Vice-President of the United States lied to the American people to start this war. Our Congress didn’t have the guts to stop them or impeach them afterward.  It will be an expensive victory. Over 4,100 of our soldiers have been killed and 30,000 wounded, including 750 amputees. Somewhere between 86,000 and 94,000 Iraqi civilians have also been killed. Read Barack Obama’s 2002 speech about going to war with Iraq.

Let’s talk taxes. Palin said, “And let me be specific: The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, and raise payroll taxes, and raise investment income taxes, and raise the death tax, and raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.” Oh my God! The truth is Obama will end the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Rich is defined as people making over $250,000 a year. Obama will cut your taxes more than McCain, if you make under $118,000 a year (80% of taxpayers are in this group). McCain will continue the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000. Read the New York Times Magazine article Obamanomics. It explains this in detail.

“And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: We’ve got lots of both.” What are you waiting for Governor? Ship that oil and gas down to us. It’s too bad Bush/Cheney didn’t do something to promote solar power, wind power and hybrid cars the past 8 years. We might not be as dependent on foreign oil now.

Governor Palin forgot to mention that she wants to take away a woman’s right to an abortion.

I’m voting for Barack Obama. You should too.

Honesty

I watched Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention last night on CNN. She impressed me as being an honest person. She appeared genuine and trustworthy and her message was uplifting. She seems very intelligent too. I was going to say that she must be very smart because she graduated from prestigious Princeton University, but as the world now knows, you can have an Ivy League education and still be an idiot.  I think she will keep Barack on track when he is elected President of the United States of America. I can’t imagine that she would let her husband invade another country based on a bunch of lies or pardon someone like “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted of obstructing justice and lying under oath, before he served even 5 minutes of his sentence. One of the lies was that Libby blamed an innocent person, the late Tim Russert, for leaking classified information about Valerie Plame. Judith Miller, an innocent New York Times reporter, spent 85 days in jail for refusing to discuss the case with a grand jury. A lot of things would be different if Libby had just been honest. It’s not too late though. He could still confess if he wanted to.

After 8 years of lies from Bush and his thugs, it will be refreshing to have a president and administration you can believe in.

The Republicans are running television lies that say Obama is going to raise your taxes. More lies? Yes. I was at the Washington County Fair, in upstate New York Sunday. I stopped by the Democratic party’s booth to pick up an Obama lawn sign. As I was leaving, a man in the next booth saw my sign and said, “he’s going to raise your taxes.” I stopped, looked at him and said “that’s not true”.  I told him to read the article in the New York Times Magazine of August 24, 2008, “Obamanomics“, by David Leonhardt.

To briefly quote from the article: “For the bottom 80 percent of the population — those households making $118,000 or less — McCain’s various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average. Obama’s proposals would bring $900 a year in savings. So for most people, Obama is the tax cutter in this campaign.”

It’s an excellent article with a lot of detailed information. Read it and you will know how to respond to people who say “he’s going to raise your taxes.”

Rush Limbaugh, the Republican radio loudmouth who broadcasts from Palm Beach, Florida, apparently read the Obamanomics article too and distilled a very thoughtful, well documented article into a cheap slogan. He quoted Barack Obama paraphrasing Warren Buffett and turned it into “Just tax the heck out of people”. He suggested that McCain could use it as a campaign ad. Obama didn’t say it, he was paraphrasing Buffett. But, it doesn’t matter to Rush, the truth is irrelevant. If Rush was Pinocchio, his nose would stretch from Palm Beach to the South Side of Chicago.

I suppose that the campaign ads will just get worse from now until the election. I expect that the ads will be mostly negative, especially from the Republican side. Who cares about honesty? Just take a snippet of something somebody said, or a soundbite out of context and turn it into propaganda.