Quote:ccm911 wrote:

Quote:David, looks like we need to choose the lesser of three evils.

That pretty much sums it up. Three evils.

I was going to vote for Clinton because I figured that McCain would be more of the same of what we've had for the last 8 years. I regard Obama as sorbet - looks and tastes great, but no substance. Clinton was doing pretty well on substance and policy, but I'm really not liking her tendancy to embellish her stories.

As of today I am loathed to vote for any of them.

I'm now at the point where I might be in for some strategic voting.

I'm leaning in the direction that I might end up voting for McCain even though I don't like him or his policies. I figure that at best he's a one term president (probably intended as a stopgap until Jeb Bush cab be made to run) that will continue to ride out the current mess and continue the current trend of predictably bad decisions and policies. He will continue to mess up the country and then a good Democrat (or independent - Bloomburg?) alternative will come up from the ashes and take the presidency for the next 8 years. The wildcard here is who McCain choses as VP. He stands a pretty good chance of kicking the bucket, so his VP choice really matters. I'd have to know that his VP is not Adolf Huckabee, or someone like him.

The alternative is that the Cotton Candy King (Obama) will come along and screw things up even more and then we're stuck with more big spending Republicans for another 8 years.

If Obama gets in I would expect his lack of experience to translate into poor decisions and policy - he supports (and says) whatever is popular and that drives me nuts. He's pandering to the "have-nots", so you can guarentee that I would see tax increases that go to support programs that I would disagree with. His science credentials are almost as bad as McCain's, so you would not see any good science policies, nor any science based decisions (well, we've been used to that for the last 7.5 years!) while he's in office and that would take us further in a bad direction for our future. Note that he's not talking about how to improve education!

Clinton... what can I say? Smart woman. She's calculated in everything she does and says. I like her policies and the substance she has put behind them. She is the one candidate that has said what she will do and how she will pay for it - gotta like that. Sadly she's been making some rookie mistakes recently that undermine her credibility. The mistakes make you ask how you can trust someone who embelishes on unimportant things.... if you can't trust someone on the unimportant stuff, then how can you trust them on the important stuff.

...so, as I said, why bother getting out of bed? We REALLY need some better choices.

Let's assume that Obama gets the nomination. Do we REALLY believe that he could take the majority vote, or the country? I doubt it. To win he needs more than just democrats to vote for him and I don't see that happening.

Quote:Okay, if you were to read the articles behind each link you would find each of the following measures that would be taken to generate the money to pay for her initiatives.

"A Commitment to Fiscal Discipline: The cost of Senator Clinton’s crime agenda is approximately $4 billion in new investments per year. This cost will be financed without increasing the deficit by allocating a portion of the savings from Senator Clinton’s Corporate Subsidy Commission. This commission will identify unnecessary and outdated corporate subsidies for elimination and present its recommendations in full to Congress for an up-or-down vote – without amendments. [American Dream Initiative, 2005.] This approach will ensure that special interests cannot interfere to protect their own subsidies."

Quote:I would love to see who is appointed to that commission.......pretty lame on specifics

Quote:"Aides said Clinton will propose several specific measures to pay for her plan, including an end to some of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 per year."

Quote:So what are the specific measures?

Quote:
"I have proposed a very specific agenda to end the giveaways to corporate special interests and to save the American people at least $55 billion a year.

Quote:So what is the specific agenda?

Quote:That's money that can go right back into your pockets through middle class tax cuts, money we can use to create new high-paying jobs, to invest in our nation's futures (sic) again, you know, for rebuilding our roads to our schools to our manufacturing sector. "

Quote:Where are the specifics in this? How's she going create new high paying jobs?

Quote:"First, I'll close the tax loopholes for companies that outsource jobs. No company will be able to use your tax dollars to ship your job overseas. "

Quote:How's this going to happen. Lack of specifics here

Quote:"She would finance this spending by eliminating the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program and freezing the estate tax at $7 million per couple (instead of allowing it to be repealed)."

Quote:I guess I can give you this one.

Quote:"Eliminate deferral provision that allows U.S. companies to defer paying U.S. taxes on income earned by their foreign subsidiaries until that income is repatriated to the U.S.

Quote:The specifics please

Quote:Close tax loopholes to ensure that companies cannot continue receiving tax benefits for locating abroad. She will disallow companies from engaging in transfer-pricing arrangements where companies avoid taxes by shifting income or assets to low-tax jurisdictions. She will eliminate incentives in the tax code (like the ability to “cross-credit�?) that encourage U.S. companies to shift operations or at least profits to low-tax jurisdictions. And she will eliminate the unfair advantage that foreign insurers located in tax havens have against U.S. insurers competing for U.S. business."

Quote:Still don't see any specifics here ether

Quote:These proposals are far more specific than I've seen from any other candidate and certainly way beyond anything Obama has put out. I'd love it if you could point me to equivalent statements by Obama. The measures listed above (assuming no other additions) amount to a significant amount of money that can be redirected to other uses, rather than going to entities that don't need the money.

I know that you like Obama - believe me I'm happy to see a Republican realizing that their party is killing this country - but I was trained to look at details and unfortunately I'm not getting them from Obama, I'm just getting a lot of feel-good fluff. It's unfortunate that the media in their usual style has not critiqued his words and called him to provide specifics. They've gone easy on the boy wonder.

Obama sounds great - I could even call him the politicians version of my favorite Baskin Robbins ice cream - looks and tastes great, but not really filling and certainly nothing left if you let it sit around and age.

Sure, Hillary is a polarizing figure - nothing more polarizing than a smart, wealthy, articulate, and experienced woman to annoy people. Hell, it's even worse when you consider that she has a husband that's just the same. Heaven forbid that we would want to have two very intelligent people in the White House.

The average person doesn't relate to intelligent people. They want to vote for people like them - unfortunately they need to realize that people like them are not capable of running the country - All due to our poor quality education system.

Obama has built a base, but unfortunately that base consists of sections of the Democratic party rather than the independents that he will need to get elected. His lack of experience and attention to detail will lead him to get shredded when the GOP starts calling people's attention to his deficiencies.

That's on top of the factor that two sad realities still exist in this country that will impede both candidates - racism and sexism. It's plain and simply true that some people do not believe that either of them are capable of being President because of their sex or their color. I find both of those things to be astonishing and I shake my head when I hear people say it, but those people are out there.

I think that McCain would give both of them a tough time and neither of them is a shoe-in for the Presidency in the final race. For me it always comes down to substance over words.

If someone cannot give me anything more than a warm and fuzzy feeling, then that's not going to cut it, because when it comes down to it you need a President that's going to make the tough and sometimes unpopular decisions. Obama likes to be popular and will say anything that he thinks will further that cause. I'm sorry, but that's not a good quality in a President.

Quote:You see I can pull the same thing from Barack or McCains web site. As I mentioned earlier not one of the three can really be specfic on anything. All they can do is give a general outline as what they hope they can accomplish. I can see Baracks negotiating skills being a big plus with other countries, he's able to see other then black or white and I'm not talking race here.............but then again you'd have to read the book The one candidate who's been in the spotlight more and the longest then any of the three has been Barack. I will agree that racism and sexism do play a role but if this economy is still in the dump in November people will vote for the tin man if they had to. Now back to the Moto GP

Quote:Don't you at least acknowledge that the Obama logo is at at least cool

Quote:The average person doesn't relate to intelligent people. They want to vote for people like them - unfortunately they need to realize that people like them are not capable of running the country - All due to our poor quality education system.