Thursday, June 05, 2008

Baby Boomer Blinders

A favorite campaign phrase: "The stakes have never been higher!"
    I am running because I still believe I can win on the merits. Because, with our economy in crisis, our nation at war, the stakes have never been higher - and the need for real leadership has never been greater - and I believe I can provide that leadership." Hillary Clinton [although she's not the only pundit with this line]
Did these people not finish high school? Don't they remember the Carter years? We had interest rates hovering at 20%--or was that the unemployment rate? Don't they remember the 1970s, how we ran out on our Vietnamese allies? Or what about the Great Depression--surely they learned something about that in school--that FDR* managed to stretch it out for a decade? What about 1944--when our country was completely demoralized and we thought we were losing the war? What about in the late 1930s and early 1940s when our major news media ignored what was happening to the European Jews, hardly our finest hour, or the 1990s when our government ignored averted its eyes to what was happening in Rwanda? What about when the American inner cities were burning in the 1960s? What about 2004 when all we heard from John Kerry was the economy is tanking, and then within a week of losing the election, all of a sudden there was only good economic news? Have they ever heard of the Civil War? Was nothing at stake during the Lincoln Douglas debates? How about 1776 when George Washington and his rag tag troops were virtually defeated by a superior army? Baby boomer blinders.

Here's the news I've been hearing this past week--stock market was up, we're winning the war, unemployment claims are down, and housing purchases are up. Yes, you do have to read the 11th paragraph instead of the first two in the newspaper articles, and switch off cute perky newsbabes. Yes, it's bad news that Ford is moving some plants to Mexico--but that's a result of a business decision--the CEOs are responsible to the shareholders, not the people of Ohio. When people assume the Democrats will be in power, they know the next move will be to raise taxes, and they have to act quickly. Unions are already killing us in Ohio and Michigan--the Democrats' new taxes will just be the final blow to our economy.

As far as I know, the U.S. border news is still yucky, but I doubt that either Obama or McCain will even mention that one or debate it, since both support amnesty for illegal workers and their extended families.

*"So it's worth remembering that, 75 years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt destroyed an inflation hedge that was literally as good as gold: the so-called "gold clause." This helped prolong the Depression and has been causing damage ever since." Amy Shlaes

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The stakes have never been higher...gas prices have never been higher...Our national debt has never been higher...global competition has never been higher...underemployment has never been higher...the burden on social security and medicare has never been higher...the amount of household income spent on health care has never been higher...the desire to end an unpopular and unjust war has never been higher...the need for competent government has never been higher...And McCain wants to bring us a third Bush term.

How can America afford that?

You lament the plight of the Jews and Vietnamese, but what about the million civilians who have died in Iraq because of our actions? And what about the 300,000 more who have died in Darfur as a result of our inaction?

Anonymous said...

Hats off to a true liberal. Can't face facts or history so you move on.

Anonymous said...

Lol! And yet you make no substantive refute of my points and then move on. Who can't face facts or history?

I bet you're one of those people who think global warming is a hoax, Saddam attacked us on 9/11 and our boys are dying in Iraq "to protect our freedom" aren't you?

Norma said...

I don't know about anon8:30, but I believe MAN made global warming is not only a hoax, but a religion. Ohio was under a glacier not too many thousands of years ago, so of course, it's warming, and thank goodness. But it's been cooling for about the last 10 years. And Greenland used to be much warmer. Earth has cycles, earthquakes, volcanoes and sun--deal with it, but don't kill the economy which will bring in the technology to live with it.

Is there a reason the Moslems in Darfur mean more to you than the Moslems in Iraq? Each are being killed by other Moslems.

Anonymous said...

It baffles me that supposedly reasonable, literate, thinking people are willing to accept outlandish religious precepts on faith, and then outright reject the global warming as a "religion" despite the preponderance of evidence showing that it is real.

Do you see the contradiction here? Do you think that the world is only 6,000 years old, too? Did Noah really build an ark for all the animals, and if he did, did he take the polar bears and kangaroos and baby dinosaurs with him?

On the topic of Darfur, if we would have had a competent and honest government in Washington, then we wouldn't have sacrificed our sons and daughters at the altar of what Scott McClellan called "coercive democracy" that led to the deaths of a million Iraqis, not all of whom were Muslim.

Additionally, we would have had the resources to do something in Darfur. Instead, our resources are stretched so thin that we can't even take care of ourselves if another catastrophe hits the U.S.

Tell us again, how can we afford a 3rd Bush term?

Norma said...

Ah a favorite Binky phrase--3rd term. Probably no two Republicans are further apart than McCain and Bush. However, the Surge was McCain's program, not Bush's, and it seems to be working, and Obama voted against it. He says he was against the war too, neglecting to mention he wasn't in Washington when all those other Democrats voted for it.

Anonymous said...

When does the surge end? McCain says we have already drawn down. Either he's lying or confused because we have more troops now than when it started. Of course, since he doesn't know the difference between Sunnis and Shia, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and just say that he's confused.

McCain/Bush have set up this great catch-22. If there's more violence, that means that we have to stay in Iraq until the violence ends. If the violence ends, that means we have to stay there to keep the peace. Of course, the violence will never end until we leave, and since we'll never leave regardless, maybe McCain's vision for 100 years in Iraq will come true.

Oh, and nice flip-flop by McCain on keeping the Bush tax cuts permanent. Before, he said that it is irresponsible to cut taxes during wartime, and now that it looks like the cost of the unnecessary war will reach 2 trillion dollars (not that you so-called fiscal conservatives care), he wants to see us continue borrowing a billion a week from China to finance it.

Not sure about you, but aside from McCain being against torture and Bush being for it, I don't see any day light between the two.