What to expect at the debate tonight?

[iplaw]

quote:Soviet Union was already greatly weakened with Reagan came in.

I'll take liberal revisionist history for $1000 Alex...

[xx(]

[rwarn17588]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

quote:Soviet Union was already greatly weakened with Reagan came in.

I'll take liberal revisionist history for $1000 Alex...

[xx(]

Maybe.

I recall my first year in college in 1982 when a professor of mine confidently predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse within the next decade or so because he determined that its system was economically unsustainable.

I'm sure he wasn't the only one who came to that conclusion.

[Hometown]

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the CIA testified before Congress explaining that they had always exagerated the strength of the Soviet Union in their Congressional testimony.

The Soviet Union was imploding when Reagan came in.  That is not to say that his increased defense spending didn't push them over the edge.

[tim huntzinger]

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

That is not to say that his increased defense spending didn't push them over the edge.

Took longer, but looks like we neo-capitalists are following.

Saaaayyyy what was that O'Bama was saying about lax credit card laws that makes Delaware a safe-haven for credit card companies? Delaware.  Who is from Delaware again?

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

quote:Soviet Union was already greatly weakened with Reagan came in.

I'll take liberal revisionist history for $1000 Alex...

[xx(]

Maybe.

I recall my first year in college in 1982 when a professor of mine confidently predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse within the next decade or so because he determined that its system was economically unsustainable.

I'm sure he wasn't the only one who came to that conclusion.

I'm glad we didn't have to wait for a "maybe"

[waterboy]

quote:Originally posted by tim huntzinger

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

That is not to say that his increased defense spending didn't push them over the edge.

Took longer, but looks like we neo-capitalists are following.

Saaaayyyy what was that O'Bama was saying about lax credit card laws that makes Delaware a safe-haven for credit card companies? Delaware.  Who is from Delaware again?

Delaware was quite popular for registering corporations long before Biden was around. I doubt that it has much to do with Biden or laxity of laws. Probably uniformity.

[we vs us]

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

Soviet Union was already greatly weakened with Reagan came in.  The first thing he did was fire the air traffic controllers, cancel the CETA job training program and all but eliminate legal aid for poor folks.  He disrespected working people.  What does RM call trickle down?  Tickle on.  It's been an era of denial, squandered opportunity, waste and economic injustice – a celebration of selfishness.

Esquire Magazine endorsed Obama, and yeah, I get it, it's Esquire, but whoever wrote the piece brought their A-game.  And more important, I haven't seen a better articulation of just how un-American some of Reagan's underpinning ideals actually were.

quote: " . . . there is much about this country now that ought to divide us, that it is time for a loud, impolite fight about what it means to be an American.  

In truth, though, Senator Obama is the only one of the two candidates who seems to believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, that there are those things -- be they the guarantees in the Bill of Rights or mountains in Alaska -- that we own together. Barack Obama stands, however inchoately and however diffidently, for the notion that a common purpose is necessary for common problems, that "government," as it is designed in our founding documents, is our collective responsibility. It is this collective responsibility that built America into a great power without peer in the history of the world. And it is this collective responsibility that has succumbed to nearly thirty years of phony rightist populism, corporate brigandage, and the wildly cheered abandonment of a common American civic purpose. It is shocking that in America an argument for salvaging the common good is regarded as a radical notion by anyone, but that is where we are. And that is what Barack Obama seems to stand for. After all, as a young man with his potential, he could have headed straight to midtown Manhattan and made a fortune. Instead, he took a church job working for poor people in Chicago, and for his troubles, he and those poor people have been viciously jeered by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin. Such is their regard for the common good. And such is Obama's promise. And in that, however inchoately and however diffidently, Obama stands not only against Bushism, but against Reaganism, which gave it birth. And that is more than enough.  

I know this may make some ears bleed on this forum, but man, it's tough, excellent stuff.  Made me smile just to read it.

[Hometown]

If Obama does represent the dawning of a new era the question is what will it look like.  A revived "Left" is not going to look like it looked before Reagan.

So far he seems to be painting a picture of himself as a centrist in the Clinton mold.  If that ends up being his mode of operation then we will have another footnote to a fading Reagan era.

It took Roosevelt, the Great Depression and World War II to create a sense of "common good" in the U.S.'s upper class.

Roosevelt saved Capitalism and our way of life.

[pmcalk]

quote:Originally posted by we vs us

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

Soviet Union was already greatly weakened with Reagan came in.  The first thing he did was fire the air traffic controllers, cancel the CETA job training program and all but eliminate legal aid for poor folks.  He disrespected working people.  What does RM call trickle down?  Tickle on.  It's been an era of denial, squandered opportunity, waste and economic injustice – a celebration of selfishness.

Esquire Magazine endorsed Obama, and yeah, I get it, it's Esquire, but whoever wrote the piece brought their A-game.  And more important, I haven't seen a better articulation of just how un-American some of Reagan's underpinning ideals actually were.

quote: " . . . there is much about this country now that ought to divide us, that it is time for a loud, impolite fight about what it means to be an American.  

In truth, though, Senator Obama is the only one of the two candidates who seems to believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, that there are those things -- be they the guarantees in the Bill of Rights or mountains in Alaska -- that we own together. Barack Obama stands, however inchoately and however diffidently, for the notion that a common purpose is necessary for common problems, that "government," as it is designed in our founding documents, is our collective responsibility. It is this collective responsibility that built America into a great power without peer in the history of the world. And it is this collective responsibility that has succumbed to nearly thirty years of phony rightist populism, corporate brigandage, and the wildly cheered abandonment of a common American civic purpose. It is shocking that in America an argument for salvaging the common good is regarded as a radical notion by anyone, but that is where we are. And that is what Barack Obama seems to stand for. After all, as a young man with his potential, he could have headed straight to midtown Manhattan and made a fortune. Instead, he took a church job working for poor people in Chicago, and for his troubles, he and those poor people have been viciously jeered by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin. Such is their regard for the common good. And such is Obama's promise. And in that, however inchoately and however diffidently, Obama stands not only against Bushism, but against Reaganism, which gave it birth. And that is more than enough.  

I know this may make some ears bleed on this forum, but man, it's tough, excellent stuff.  Made me smile just to read it.

Along those same lines, the article by Thomas Friedman today was particularly good:

quote:
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can't just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: "You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that's not patriotic."

What an awful statement. Palin defended the government's $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.

I only wish she had been asked: "Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn't from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?" That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.

Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08friedman.html?hp

The common good requires sacrifise from everyone--when we make that sacrifice, we are being patriotic.

You can disagree with how our taxes are spent, or whether they are being spent wisely, but paying taxes is patriotic--just as serving in the military, teaching our children, being a police officer, volunteering are all patriotic.  Doing what we can for the common good of our country is patriotic.

[buckeye]

Diehards and thinking persons from both parties have already made up their minds.  The only ones left are the ignorant and/or stupid - and they'll be glad to vote for Obama because he makes them feel all warm and fuzzy.

Worthless debate, just like every other of its kind in recent memory.

[we vs us]

What I liked about the Esquire editorial is its premise that good government is patriotic.  Not just service -- which I don't think has ever stopped being honored -- but government itself.

[HoneySuckle]

Obama won that debate hands down.

[iplaw]

I don't necessarily disagree, but it depends on how you define "good government."

I found something that struck me earlier today:

quote:"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform them." -- James Madison

Here is another that seems to sum up the situation we find ourselves in today:

quote:"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people.. must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live..  We have not time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow suffers.  Our landholders, too...retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must...be contented with penury, obscurity and exile.. private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.

This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in it's train wretchedness and oppression." -- Thomas Jefferson

Wow...

[Conan71]

The Esquire piece reads like a bunch of self- love by a recent doctoral candidate.  My read is they aren't for Obama so much as they are against McCain.

"Barack Obama had a moment, as fragile as thin ice, in which he could have defined "change," which he never truly has defined except as all those things encompassed by the phrase "Elect me."

"Change" is now whatever Barack Obama needs it to be at the moment. He is the change. We are the change. And there it ends. He thought it meant an end to "partisanship" without appreciating that democracies are supposed to be partisan, never more so than when a "bipartisan" consensus fits American military justice with a kangaroo suit. He thought it meant an end to "divisiveness" without appreciating the fact that there is much about this country now that ought to divide us, that it is time for a loud, impolite fight about what it means to be an American."

I don't find it complimentary at all.  It makes Obama sound like a hack political chameleon.

Reagan was a great unifier.  Coming on the heels of Dastardly Dick Nixon's dirty politics and Carter's disastrous admin, his policies made people proud to be Americans again.  He had a near total mandate in the '84 electoral college.  That doesn't typify failed policy.  We don't need more divisiveness.  What did 12 years of shrill partisanship, led by the GOP majority in Congress accomplish for us?  Nothing.

Esquire missed on this one.  Nice prose, but the message is wrong.  We need unity.

[Hometown]

Unity means the upper class carrying their share of the burden.

Everyone else is already there.