Obama '08?

Can't tell you nimh, sorry. I don't have cable or satelite TV nor do I have broadband internet. Haven't been able to view all the debates nor have I read every one of the transcripts. If it hasn't been mentioned in the highlights from media reports, I wouldn't know.

I had similar questions about the stimulus plans both of them put out. Why they even wasted anyone's time talking about that as part of their fiscal plans for the country is beyond me. By the time either of them get in office, the problem will either resolve itself or be so far out of control that it will take CPR to stimulate the thing and not just a bandaid.

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Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

Vietnamnurse wrote:
Yah sure you betcha, BPB, and as one proud native Minnesotan, I loved it!

Well, after all we Minnesotans are known to be very progressive and inclusive! My dear uncle who was president of a large Methodist theologial seminary in Chicago (Garrett) marched with MLK and he sure was Minnesotan.

I love the cadences. He has GOT them and let him USE them. Maybe you think poetry doesn't count. It does. Barack is more than poetry and Hillary knows it. That is why she fears him. Poetry has moved the world.

He doesn't have them.... he has developed them.... he didn't sound like that in the early going....what's next a blue polyester suit and white patent leather shoes? Will the White House be renamed the Cathedral Of tomorrow? Will we change taxes to tithes?

I don't know, it seems to me he's used his "preacher voice" whenever he's spoken to live crowds.

Whether or not it's an affectation, I can't say.

I don't know a lot about his early days, but it seems to me that I've read that his childhood was fairly unorthodox. The African-American style of oratory that he, undoubtedly, seems to be using has its origins in the environment of the black church. I'm sure it has deeper roots in the oral traditions of tribal Africa, but we associate it with the more recent stage of its development when the only place where large groups of Africa-Americans gathering to listen to inspiration rhetoric was tolerated.

It would be entirely understandable for a black youth who regularly attended the sermons of a charismatic black preacher to adopt the style when he wanted to move people with his own spoken word.

The style of oratory is pervasive because it works. The rythmic cadence connects with people. Any number of white preachers have adopted the style themselve, albeit in a somewhat moderate form.

I'm sure there are plenty of people like Vietnamnurse who simply like the style and don't stop to think of how natural or affected it might be for Obama.

For others, and I include myself in this number, it sounds somewhat forced. It may a perfectly natural style to Obama, but when he lays it on thick (and he does modulate his use of it) and kick in the Southern accent to boot, I can't help but feel like I'm being preached to.

I may be in the minority, but to the extent that there is a large contingency who feel the way I do, then perhaaps Obama should rethink its use. When style gets in the way of the listener's ability to hear the words, it's a problem.

No matter why or how he uses it though, he does a hell of a better job with it than Hillary's Ah don feels no way tarred

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I think BPB has been clear that he doesn't like Obama because - for whatever reasons - he doesn't trust him. I suspect he is very far from being alone in holding that opinion. I have not seen him assert that he knows as an objective, verifiable fact that Obama is untrustworthy.

It seems to me that none of us has any basis on which to criticize such intuitive opinions. Moreover, from the criticisms of Bear's opinions I've read here, it seems very clear that most of his critics have made their own intuitive leaps as well (merely in the other direction). It is futile and a bit silly to castigate anyone for such judgements. OK to offer counter arguments and facts supporting a different view, but in fact the issue is unknowable to all of us. Obama in particular has much less public exposure and accountable experience than either of the two main Republican candidates, and a bit less than Hillary -- so the concern is at least not without foundation.

For me the most interesting aspect of this dispute is that the Obama supporters appear to really believe that they KNOW BEYOND DOUBT that Obama is both trustworthy and the better candidate. In addition they appear to have a rather low threshold of indignation when confronted with ANY criticism of their favored candidate. These are, of course, the standard hallmarks of real fanatics.

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I won't begrudge Bear his opinions about Obama. I even somewhat can see what he's talking about though I don't agree. But can we do without the allusions to religious fervor that are so insulting? Like all of us who support Obama are in some sort of cultish trance -- religious zombies stumbling towards the voting booth. But Bear is alone in yelling out to us "no! don't! it's a trap!" Only he can see through the Obama facade. How about this: the ability to inspire people and get them on your side is a leadership quality, and it would be nice if our president possessed such a quality. There are lots of other reasons to support Obama, but his charisma seems to be the one that folks want to turn against him so badly. I say it's an asset in the job.

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maporsche wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Yes - it shows that the straight talk express really is a bunch of BS. And it's hard to tie someone closer to Bush then a picture like that.

Cycloptichorn

Yes ... if he embraces the man, they obviously share the same views on all of the issues.

Similarly, because Obama doesn't place his hand over his heart, it's clear he does not love his country.

It's true .... pictures are worth a thousand words.

I wouldn't extrapolate either picture out that far....
I'm not sure Tico does, but I am sure Cyclo does
I find them both funny.

And could someone add "Obama" to the spellcheck for pete's sake.

You can add it to your spellcheck

When Obama pops up in the "word correction" window just hit the "Learn" button

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georgeob1 wrote:

I think BPB has been clear that he doesn't like Obama because - for whatever reasons - he doesn't trust him.

Yup, and we're still waiting to hear why.

georgeob1 wrote:

I suspect he is very far from being alone in holding that opinion. I have not seen him assert that he knows as an objective, verifiable fact that Obama is untrustworthy.

It seems to me that none of us has any basis on which to criticize such intuitive opinions. Moreover, from the criticisms of Bear's opinions I've read here, it seems very clear that most of his critics have made their own intuitive leaps as well (merely in the other direction). It is futile and a bit silly to castigate anyone for such judgements. OK to offer counter arguments and facts supporting a different view, but in fact the issue is unknowable to all of us. Obama in particular has much less public exposure and accountable experience than either of the two main Republican candidates, and a bit less than Hillary -- so the concern is at least not without foundation.

For me the most interesting aspect of this dispute is that the Obama supporters appear to really believe that they KNOW BEYOND DOUBT that Obama is both trustworthy and the better candidate. In addition they appear to have a rather low threshold of indignation when confronted with ANY criticism of their favored candidate. These are, of course, the standard hallmarks of real fanatics.

Come on George. Obama has more elected experience than Hillary or Romney, and you damn well know it.

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George and BPB,

I am not criticizing BPB for opinions other than the ones I hold...I just think the tenor of his speech is loud and unforgivable to his old friends...and I thought I was one of them. I don't expect people to think or vote the way I do and was not meaning that. Not at all.......

One of the reasons I write so few times on these threads is because I tread gently when it comes to others feelings and sympathies. Politics is a messy and invariably causes friendships to combust. My guess is that it will happen frequently this year as the primary season is drawn out longer than usual.

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FreeDuck wrote:

How do you make them? Don't you have to penalize them if they fail to do it? And if so, doesn't that put you in exactly the same place as the Obama plan -- punishing people who didn't sign up when they should have?

The same way you enforce that everyone is enrolled in the Social Security system and pays their taxes. The same way every other democracy enforces people's enrollment in their universal healthcare systems. I can't tell you in detail what this way is. I'm not an expert on enforcing the regulations of a welfare state, and I have no authoritative answer to your "how" questions. But for purposes of this argument, I don't need to. I only need to show you that it can be done. For this, my evidence is that the US can enforce enrollment into other forms of social insurance, such as old age insurance, disability insurance, and joblessness insurance. Additionally, Canada, Japan, Australia, and about 45 European countries have universal healthcare system, which they have no trouble enforcing enrollment in. From these facts, it's a very small leap of faith indeed to extrapolate that the US can enforce mandatory enrollment into health insurance if it wants to.

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Quote:

I'm not sure Tico does, but I am sure Cyclo does

Oh, I just think it's going to be super effective.

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Thomas et others:

I'd like to see a little outrage at Hillary using classic right-wing mailers to attack Obama.

http://www.bluejersey.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6847

Cycloptichorn

1) Which part of this mailer do you assert is false?

2) Even if Clinton's attack flyer is a dishonest smear, which it may well be: This thread is about Obama. Some correspondents here post about Obama's strengths. Others post about Obama's weaknesses. Yet others present a balance about him. But the title of this thread is "Obama 08?", not "Clinton 08?" If few people attack Hillary when she's out of line, that's just because this thread isn't about Clinton. You'll have to live with that.

3) All that said -- if this mailer turns out to be demonstrably false, put me down as outraged.

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Right now I'm watching Hannity & Colmes, and they just showed a segment where their pollster interviewed a group of self-described Democrats about their preferred candidates.

All of them indicated there is not a single Republican (including McCain) that they would consider voting for.

The majority of them said they were for Obama

One woman claimed to be in the National Guard and said she supported Clinton because she felt she would end the war.

Another woman said she was for Clinton, then Obama, and now Clinton again because Obama "can't get enough cities." (???????)

Sean Hannity asked the Pollster over his earpierce to ask the Obama supporters to name a single achievement of their man Barrack.

Some couldn't answer at all, and none could provide anything that approached what one might call an "achievement."

Here are the answers I can remember

"He's an oratator"

"He reformed congress"

"Labor organizer"

"Worked with the old people"

"He inspires"

I have a feeling that these people truly are representative of most Obama supporters. For the most part, the Obama supporters on A2K are far more knowledgable about Obama, politics, currents events and probably life in general than anyone who expressed such steadfast commitment for Obama at this session.

I'm not sanguine about how a group of McCain supporters would have performed in a similar setting, but I bet most of them would have been able to recount that he survived the Hanoi Hilton - at least that's actually an achievement.

People who really know very little about what's actually happening in the world or about Obama himself, do know that he sounds like a leader, and is not a Republican, and that apparently is enough for them.

What's a little scary is that these people probably feel like they have some interest in and knowledge of the campaigns. Someone with no interest or no opinion would probably not have agreed to take part in the session.

Sometime I have to struggle to maintain my faith in my fellow Americans' aggregate ability to make a decent decision about who should be our president.

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The 'trillion dollar tax increase' part. Why not just say an 'umpty billion google' dollar increase. It's BS.

Also, the 'Hillary's plan to end mortgage problems.' She's not going to be in office for a year, at best; her plan isn't going to help anyone anytime soon, but is included as a sop for anyone who is worried about it.

I'll note that there is no reliable Hillary thread. That alone should tell you something.

Cycloptichorn

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Thomas wrote:

FreeDuck wrote:
How do you make them? Don't you have to penalize them if they fail to do it? And if so, doesn't that put you in exactly the same place as the Obama plan -- punishing people who didn't sign up when they should have?

The same way you enforce that everyone is enrolled in the Social Security system and pays their taxes. The same way every other democracy enforces people's enrollment in their universal healthcare systems. I can't tell you in detail what this way is. I'm not an expert on enforcing the regulations of a welfare state, and I have no authoritative answer to your "how" questions. But for purposes of this argument, I don't need to. I only need to show you that it can be done. For this, my evidence is that the US can enforce enrollment into other forms of social insurance, such as old age insurance, disability insurance, and joblessness insurance. Additionally, Canada, Japan, Australia, and about 45 European countries have universal healthcare system, which they have no trouble enforcing enrollment in. From these facts, it's a very small leap of faith indeed to extrapolate that the US can enforce mandatory enrollment into health insurance if it wants to.

But the how DOES matter if you're going to make any assumptions about whether people can avoid complying. I don't know about other countries, but here the systems you mention are paid for by taxes, more or less. Yes, they're broken out on your pay stub, but they are further enforced during filing. People who are self-employed must pay additional social security when they file, for example. But this isn't something you can do if you are going to use private insurance to implement universal health care. So again, the how does matter -- especially if we're going to expand on the inevitable problems of Obama's solution and pretend that those same problems won't occur in Hillary's, with no specifics to back that up.

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Finn:

I remember the days on Abuzz where many of us couldn't fathom the support of those who thought George W. Bush was an "inspired choice."

We have had all the "experience" we need to lead a country over a cliff.

"nuff said."

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Thomas wrote:

FreeDuck wrote:
How do you make them? Don't you have to penalize them if they fail to do it? And if so, doesn't that put you in exactly the same place as the Obama plan -- punishing people who didn't sign up when they should have?

The same way you enforce that everyone is enrolled in the Social Security system and pays their taxes. The same way every other democracy enforces people's enrollment in their universal healthcare systems. I can't tell you in detail what this way is. I'm not an expert on enforcing the regulations of a welfare state, and I have no authoritative answer to your "how" questions. But for purposes of this argument, I don't need to. I only need to show you that it can be done. For this, my evidence is that the US can enforce enrollment into other forms of social insurance, such as old age insurance, disability insurance, and joblessness insurance. Additionally, Canada, Japan, Australia, and about 45 European countries have universal healthcare system, which they have no trouble enforcing enrollment in. From these facts, it's a very small leap of faith indeed to extrapolate that the US can enforce mandatory enrollment into health insurance if it wants to.

Thomas,

...

This is actually a huge question. If it is a Tax matter (as I believe is should be), you are completely off the reservation. If you were President; would you really have people mandatory prop up insurance companies while guaranteeing healthcare for all, instead of skipping the parasitical middle man? I seriously doubt it. Of all people; YOU should see the danger here.

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Cycloptichorn, how much would Social Security taxes rise under Obama's plans? And specifically what should it tell us that there is no Hillary Clinton thread? Your paranoid whispering of ominous generalities adds more heat than light to this conversation.

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Thomas wrote:

Cycloptichorn, how much would Social Security taxes rise under Obama's plans? And specifically what should it tell us that there is no Hillary Clinton thread? Your paranoid whispering of ominous generalities adds more heat than light to this conversation.

To be fair, Obama has said that this is 'one possible option' and not part of his formal economic plan. So it's disingenuous for people on one hand to criticize him for not formally enumerating everything in his Health Care plan, as some have done, yet attack him for other off-hand comments in the way Clinton has done in this mailer.

But, the cost is somewhere around a trillion dollars - over 12 years. And half of that will be payed by employers, not the taxpayer themselves. So that's pretty false; to use a gigantic figure, extrapolated into the future, as a scare tactic. I've seen it before.

Clinton has proposed rolling back the Bush tax cuts, which would directly raise taxes by around 200 billion a year. Now, Obama has as well; but you don't see him claiming that she's proposing a 2 trillion dollar tax increase. Dishonest.

On the other issue, what it should tell you is that there has been no sustained swell of enthusiasm amongst Hillary supporters on A2K. People choose her because she is known, not because she inspires them in any real way. Just my opinion, of course.

Cycloptichorn

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FreeDuck wrote:

I don't know about other countries, but here the systems you mention are paid for by taxes, more or less. Yes, they're broken out on your pay stub, but they are further enforced during filing. People who are self-employed must pay additional social security when they file, for example. But this isn't something you can do if you are going to use private insurance to implement universal health care.

Why can't you? For example, I would have said you can ask people on their tax form who their health insurer is. If they don't give an answer, you automatically enroll them in the government plan, and charge the premium to their tax bill.

Or you break health insurance premiums out of the pay stub, just as you do with the payroll tax, and send them on to the employee's health insurance company, just as you send the payroll tax on to the SSA. (That's how they do it in Germany.)

Just two suggestions, which I hope answer O'Bill's questions too.

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Thomas wrote:

Why can't you? For example, I would have said you can ask people on their tax form who their health insurer is. If they don't give an answer, you automatically enroll them in the government plan, and charge the premium to their tax bill.

Not to be a nit picker, but is someone at the IRS actually going to verify your answer? I'm not opposed to enforcing it this way, but that seems like it would work better with a single payer system.

Quote:

Or you break health insurance premiums out of the pay stub, just as you do with the payroll tax, and send them on to the employee's health insurance company, just as you send the payroll tax on to the SSA. (That's how they do it in Germany.)

Who is "you" in this scenario? Employers are required to collect taxes and SSI and medicare. If they offer health insurance, they currently deduct those premiums pre-tax. But there are plenty of people who are self-employed or who work for companies that don't offer insurance. It's those people you have to find a way to force to purchase insurance. So back to the original subject, Krugman is essentially tagging Obama for a) appearing to flip-flop on mandates and b) not having a very good mechanism for enforcement. I say that his same argument applies to Hillary's plan as I don't believe there is an enforcement mechanism that will ensure 100% compliance if we're mandating that people purchase private insurance, or even if we just give them the option to purchase private insurance over a public plan.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

But, the cost is somewhere around a trillion dollars - over 12 years. And half of that will be payed by employers, not the taxpayer themselves. So that's pretty false; to use a gigantic figure, extrapolated into the future, as a scare tactic. I've seen it before.

Fair enough. Consider me outraged. Are you happy?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Clinton has proposed rolling back the Bush tax cuts, which would directly raise taxes by around 200 billion a year. Now, Obama has as well; but you don't see him claiming that she's proposing a 2 trillion dollar tax increase. Dishonest.

Obama wants to lift the cap on payroll taxes. As far as I can tell he is vague about whether he wants to elminate it completely or whether he just wants to shift the threshold towards higher incomes. According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, eliminating the cap completely would raise payroll taxes by about $400 billion a year. That's not the trillion Clinton is talking about, and I'm not defending the flyer, but it's within the same order of magnitude.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

On the other issue, what it should tell you is that there has been no sustained swell of enthusiasm amongst Hillary supporters on A2K. People choose her because she is known, not because she inspires them in any real way. Just my opinion, of course.

That's fine. I get enough inspiration from music, paintings, and literature, maybe science and technology. I don't want my inspiration from politicians any more than I want it from janitors and housekeepers.

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