Obama Tax Calculator Widget
'The Little Hippocrat' is a progressive hippopotamus who despises corruption and abuse of power, but loves kitties, horses, and schadenfreude. He blogs about national politics from the hippo's point of view.
Sent today to the Richmond Times-Dispatch and other central Virginia papers:
According to one GOP lawmaker, some House Republicans are saying privately that they’d rather “let the markets crash” than sign on to a massive bailout.
“For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?” the member asked.
Regarding the Big Blank Check that Paulson & Co. have asked for, I sure hope that Obama comes out and says something like this:
The Bush Administration has finally realized that it has a major economic crisis on its hands. However, the solution proposed by the White House – give Henry Paulson a big blank check and just trust him – is clearly unacceptable. This was tried with Iraq and look where it got us. Bush, Paulson and Bernanke have had months to address these problems, and they’ve simply failed. We cannot "just trust them" any longer. When the White House proposal comes to the Congress next week, I will be proposing an amendment to the bill substituting new language that I believe will address the fundamental problems facing our economy – falling housing prices, crushing consumer debt, rising unemployment, institutional insolvency, and rampant Wall Street greed and corruption. It will be a comprehensive approach that is also transparent. It will be bipartisan.
In essence, it will be everything the Bush-Paulson plan currently is not. Should the Paulson Plan reach the Senate floor in its current state, I will vote against it. Should the Administration adopt my proposals to protect homeowners, bolster employment, hold corporate executives accountable, and minimize the impact on taxpayers, then I will happily give my full support to their efforts.
While thousands of people have become homeless over the last year-and-a-half, due primarily to predatory lending on the part of unscrupulous brokers acting on behalf of reckless financial institutions, the federal government has been almost nothing to abate this crisis.
The McCain campaign continues its disregard for any limitations on campaign tactics with the release of a new ad suggesting that Obama is some sort of sexual deviant (he’s black you know, and you know how those black guys are about sex!). As I’ve said below, when winning is all you care about, then adhering to any principle that says that any absurd tactics are off limits in a campaign actually breaks the rules – when it comes to winning, the only rule is that there are no limits to what you must do to win.
To add to the post below. If everything hinges on winning, and you plan on being the winner, then naturally some one's gotta lose. That role has been aptly played by the Democrats for a while now and a lot of people are used to that. The GOP is really used to it, so much so that they make sure that when Dems lose, they lose.
Having time to reflect after last Thursday, I finally get it. All Republicans care about only one thing – winning. Nothing else matters, and the ends justify the means. These ‘values’ they preach about – sanctity of marriage, right-to-life, patriotism, all just a means to an end. That’s why they can embrace Cheney even though he’s got a lesbian daughter and his wife writes dirty romance novels. It’s why they love Palin even though she’s clearly corrupt and a liar, and her unwed teenage kid is knocked up. Cheney and Palin care about winning above all else and thus being on the same team, all other transgressions or heresies can be easily forgiven.
This is what conservatives really had against McCain – at one time he acted as if he stood on other principles – campaign reform, ending pork barrel spending, honor, etc. By naming Palin to the ticket, it showed the base once and for all that McCain had adopted their only real important value as his own – the value to do anything to win. Win, Win, Win. It’s all they care about. That’s why they can’t (more like ‘don’t try to’) govern – governing has nothing to do with winning! It’s why they love Bush when no one else does – he’s a WINNER!
And it’s why the Dems have lost time and again, and why they are at real risk of losing this time. Obama’s trying to run a campaign with values like honor, integrity, fairness. He wants to have it all – win, but win right. He’s putting himself at a competitive disadvantage. I suspect that he is aware of this to an extent, which is why he’s running his campaign the way he is – huge fundraising and GOTV effort. He might be doing this as a way to even the odds. I’m just not confident that he can pull it off.
Bill Clinton is the only Dem in the last 40 years who understood the GOP. But he only got it half-right. He did whatever it took to win the election, but the GOP kept fighting after wards and made a mess of his administration. You can’t just win the election, you have to win everything. My GOP friends always want to win all the time. It’s almost pathological. War, politics, sports, realty shows, EVERYTHING. It’s always about winning above all else. Once McCain embraced this fundamental GOP value, he became a real threat to win the election.
Now Obama has to decide just how badly he wants to win.
Who among us middle class Americans does not have "household employees"?
The McCains increased their budget for household employees from $184,000 in 2006 to $273,000 in 2007, according to John McCain’s tax returns.