• lioneljay said on Apr 23, 2008....

  Of course. And he's also a Catholic hater, a misogynist, and a lousy pilot. The question is this: one of these things is not like the other. Which one is it?

• TinSoldier said on Apr 23, 2008....

  Reading later, but I don't think he's a socialist.
  
  Then again, I don't think that Clinton or Obama are socialists either.
  

• bloc said on Apr 23, 2008....

  @tin
  yeah, the people that throw around that label are being disingenuous at best. The thing that struck me is that his statements are very similar to that of Obama, but Obama gets the dreaded socialist label. Fortunately the American people don't seem to be falling for the Rush Limbaugh act this time around.
  

• ALIENated said on Apr 23, 2008....

  
  McCain is just a good Democrat, just left of center. The better question is: how
  the heck did he become the Republican nominee? However, he is probably the
  only (so called) Republican that could win this year. I think he will win handily,
  though I could care less. We have three losers to pick from this year. Young
  people like to go to concerts (like Obama rallies), but will they get up and go
  vote, which will mean standing in line. Probably not. That is why we keep 
  getting the choice of the older generation. Plus, Little Bush said it best:
  Obama Bin Ladin. Too close for comfort.
  
  

• sheltercrow said on Apr 23, 2008....

  McCain is a wonderful politician. One of the major factors in his being a politician is his war hero record that upon close examination shows he collaborated with the enemy. Go figure.

• kelly said on Apr 25, 2008....

  "McCain is just a good Democrat, just left of center."
  
  
  And Hillary is a good Republican, just right of center. :-) I do agree with you on one point, however, and that is just how did McCain get the nomination when it seems like Ron Paul was everything a conservative could have hoped for?  I still don't get that one.
  
  
  Unless of course all this posturing by both sides is really just...posturing and BS.  Ya think?  In any of the so-called debates between Obama and Clinton did anyone ask just one if either one of them would restore habeas corpus?  If so, I missed it and I'd be glad to be filled in.
  
  
  But back to bloc's point Alienated, you didn't answer him.

• sheltercrow said on Apr 25, 2008....

  
  
  he's just one of the boys.

• silverwhisper said on Apr 25, 2008....

  you know, that's a rather telling quotation. :>
  
  ed

• ALIENated said on Apr 25, 2008....

  
  No, McCain is not a socialist, but I am not sure. He is all over the place on
  economics, or so I have heard (I only know what I hear on the news). I
  really think the president has people that does all that anyway. It will 
  depend on who he hires to run the economic stuff. (I can dream, right.)
  
  And no one needs to restore habeas corpus for American citizens. It has
  always been there (except on Boston Legal. Neither does it need to be
  restored for terrorists. They are not citizens and have no rights. Even if 
  they are citizens (like Padilla), they should have no rights.
  
  

• bloc said on Apr 25, 2008....

  @alien
  who determines if someone is guilty of being a terrorist? The right to due process is the system our founding fathers setup to ensure that no american is falsely imprisoned. Without the right to a trial americans have lost habeas corpus, and the power Bush has claimed for himself. We cannot know that someone is a terrorist until it is proven in a court of law or else the President can imprison any american falsely. 
  

• kelly said on Apr 25, 2008....

  Ah yes, Alienated, terrorists should have no rights.  And without due process how is it we're supposed to know whether or not they're terrorists?  Oh, by presidential decree I guess.  Ipso facto we have lost habeas corpus.
  
  
  My only remaining question is why do you hate America?  :-)

• bloc said on Apr 25, 2008....

  he doesn't hate america, he hates the rights that american citizens have. Ipso facto, he hates the Constitution and loves the elite power brokers. After all, why have rights when the people in power can tell us who is guilty and innocent.
  

• ALIENated said on Apr 25, 2008....

  
  Sorry, ALIENated has left the circle jerk.
  
  

• bloc said on Apr 25, 2008....

  Sorry, ALIENated has left the circle jerk because he can't backup is assertions

• sheltercrow said on Apr 25, 2008....

  What AIPAC bought for it's $162,500 (2006) in contributions to McCain.
  
  In a speech to AIPAC on April 23, 2002, McCain said that "no American leader should be expected to sell a false peace to our ally, consider Israel's right to self-defense less legitimate than ours, or insist that Israel negotiate a political settlement while terrorism remains the Palestinians' preferred bargaining tool." During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, McCain said, regarding Israel's role in the conflict with Lebanon and Hezbollah, "What would we do if somebody came across our borders and killed our soldiers and captured our soldiers?" "Do you think we would be exercising total restraint? Such restraint should come from Hezbollah and the nations sponsoring it, notably Iran."

• sheltercrow said on Apr 25, 2008....

  The hypocrisy goes so deep.
  
  In October 2005, McCain, a former POW, introduced the McCain Detainee Amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill for 2005. That month, the U.S. Senate voted 90-9 to support the amendment. The McCain Detainee Amendment was commonly referred to as the Amendment on (1) the Army Field Manual and (2) Cruel, Inhumane, Degrading Treatment, amendment #1977 and also known as the McCain Amendment 1977. It became the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 as Title X of the Department of Defense Authorization bill. The amendment prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, by confining interrogations to the techniques in Army Field Manual 34-52, "Intelligence Interrogation".
   
  McCain, whose six years of captivity and torture in Vietnam made him a national celebrity, negotiated (in September 2006) a compromise in the Senate for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, suspending habeas corpus provisions for anyone deemed by the Executive Branch an "unlawful enemy combatant" and barring them from challenging their detentions in court. Coming on the heels of a Supreme Court decision adverse to the White House, McCain's compromise gave a retroactive, nine-year immunity to U.S. officials who authorized, ordered, or committed acts of torture and abuse, and permitted the use of statements obtained through torture to be used in military tribunals so long as the abuse took place by December 30, 2005. McCain's compromise permitted the President to establish permissible interrogation techniques and to "interpret the meaning and application" of international Geneva Convention standards, so long as the coercion fell short of "serious" bodily or psychological injury. Widely dubbed McCain's "torture compromise", the bill was signed into law by George W. Bush on October 17, 2006, shortly before the 2006 midterm elections.

• sheltercrow said on Apr 25, 2008....

  The only socialism McCain does know is Corporate Socialism.
  
  From McCain On Economy-- a Corporate Special Pleader's Dream by Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Nation
  
  In response to a speech billed as the most comprehensive summary of his economic vision to date.
  
  There's not only McCain's support for making Bush's tax cuts permanent. Most outrageous is McCain's plan to cut the corporate income tax rate, from 35 percent to 25 percent. What you won't read in today's coverage of McCain's proposal is that, according to a 2004 Government Accountability Office study, 61% of American corporations, including 39% of large companies, paid no corporate income taxes between 1996 and 2000. Last year, corporations shouldered just 14.4% of the total US tax burden, compared with about 50% in 1940. And McCain wants to give these corporations a break?
  
  It gets even worse. A study from the nonprofit group Citizens for Tax Justice found that, because of loopholes, the corporate tax burden in the US is actually the world's third lowest when measured as a percentage of gross domestic product.
  
  

• curmudgeon said on Apr 28, 2008....

  To respond to bloc's question - actually McCain was indeed too liberal for the Hannity / Rush / Levin set. They pushed hard for Romney but McCain won.
   
  McCain, quite frankly, isn't my fist choice of Republicans. If you can find a quote from him about income inequality, then yeah - I'll go ahead and call him a socialist. Moreover, I'll vote Libertarian if he's said that.
   
  A War on Poverty - he's borrowing Martin Luther King's words - is one thing. I'm all for figuring out ways of improving the lot of the poorest among us, especially if it's in the form of opportunities for economic advancement. Micro-lending to small businesses and startups is one viable way of helping the world's poorest, and I think it would be a great thing if it caught on domestically.
   
  But government forcing a leveling of income is a different matter. In that case, we will all most likely become equally poor, not equally wealthy. Or worse - income levels will be equal, but double digit unemployment returns. Either case will result in worse living conditions than we have now.

• bloc said on Apr 28, 2008....

  "I'm all for figuring out ways of improving the lot of the poorest among us, especially if it's in the form of opportunities for economic advancement"
  
  
  Isn't this about income inequality? ;)
  
  
  "But government forcing a leveling of income is a different matter"
  
  
  I think there is a lot of grey between pure socialism and pure capitalism. Talking about income inequality doesn't make one a socialist unless people like Thomas Friedman, and outspoken capitalist, is now considered a socialist. 
  
  
  Income inequality can be a serious problem for a society and those at the top often aren't there because they were smarter or worked harder. I'll give one example. Bush lowered the tax rate on capital gains to 15%. What this means is that the wealthy pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes! Let me say that again. While we are running up massive debt paying for a war Bush fiddled with the rules to give the wealthiest even more. 
  
  
  I don't think that keeping capital gains taxes at 28%, what it was under clinton and less than I pay on my income, is socialism or forced leveling of income. I think it's good policy especially during a war that is causing massive debt. Reducing it to 15% increases income inequality.

• curmudgeon said on Apr 29, 2008....

  Income equality does not guarantee a higher standard of living for the poor - just an egalitarian standard of living. Again, everyone can simply be equally poor. 
   
  Capital gains taxes don't just touch the "wealthiest" Americans. They also affect people who sell their homes, sell their small businesses, and cash in their mutual funds.
   
  According to the CBO, in 2005 the top 1% of taxpayers paid 31.2% of all Federal income taxes. In other words, out of a population of 300 million people, 1.1 million households in the US paid a third of all Federal income taxes. You want them to pay more, just so we can all say we're equal? You honestly think the lives of the nation's poorest will improve? Where's the evidence of that? Where's the evidence that says poor people had better living conditions when incomes were more "equal" than they do now?
   
  That's why I'm more in favor of creating opportunities for the poor to improve their lives than for government to force some standard of "equality" just for the sake of it.

• bloc said on Apr 29, 2008....

  "Income equality does not guarantee a higher standard of living for the poor"
  
  
  I totally agree, but too much inequality is a bad thing.
  
  
  "According to the CBO, in 2005 the top 1% of taxpayers paid 31.2"
  
  
  This is true, but they pay a far far lower percentage of their income in taxes. When we are running up massive debt I think we should tax the same percentage of their income or more. 
  
  
  Do you think we should have a system where someone like myself, upper middle class, pays almost 30% of my income in taxes while warren buffet pays 17% of his income in taxes? Yes, he pays far more money than I do, but he makes even more as a ratio. To make it even worse, do Bush cut taxes more for the super wealthy than he did for people like me while running up massive debts. I find it hard to support such a setup, don't you?
  
  
  "Where's the evidence that says poor people had better living conditions when incomes were more "equal" than they do now?"
  
  
  Mexico. Mexico has one of the highest percentages of billionaires in the world. They have virtually no middle class. The issue isn't about "poor people". It's about ordinary people. It's about the middle class. Increasing income inequality doesn't make poor people worse off, it makes the middle class worse off. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• TinSoldier said on Apr 29, 2008....

  One of the factors that helped prevent high income inequality in the US, I think, is the homesteader act that the US had for a very long time. (Don't tell the Natives, though.)
  
  For various reasons and under various political regimes, the common people in other countries were less able to secure real property for themselves than they were in the US, and therefore they face far more income inequality than in the US.
  
  I think that it's one of the reasons that real socialism and popular revolts occur more often in other countries.
  
  Then again, when wealthy people and powerful corporations engage in rent-seeking behavior, the same conditions tend to occur, so our own democracy is not totally safe.
  

• curmudgeon said on Apr 29, 2008....

  bloc - you're confusing taxation with spending. Government tax revenues have actually increased over the last several years, even with the "tax cuts for the super-wealthy". If you don't want to pay for the war, convince the Democrats in Congress to de-fund it.
   
  I see - you don't care most about the poor or the wealthy - both of whom are your fellow Americans - you care about the demographic segment of which you are a part. I like the idea of equlity under the law, than you very much. Where in the Constitution does it mandate that people ought to pay taxes according to the tax-earnings ratio? Why is that the fairest means of apportioning taxes? Fairest to whom?
   
  I'm interested in what's fairest for all, not what's fairest for a particular segment of the voting population.

• bloc said on Apr 29, 2008....

  "I'm interested in what's fairest for all, not what's fairest for a particular segment of the voting population."
  
  
  I am too, so here is a simple question. Do you think the ultrawealthy like warren buffet should pay 17% while the average middle class american pays over 20% of their income in taxes? Is this fairest for all?
  
  
  "If you don't want to pay for the war, convince the Democrats in Congress to de-fund it."
  
  
  I think you missed my point. Right now we aren't paying for the war eventhough we are waging it. We are running up massive debt that our children will pay with interest! I'm asking if this is wise, and I don't think it is. To make it worse Bush cut taxes on the ultra wealthy while spending trillions,  $3,000,000,000,000ish so far.
  
  
  "I see - you don't care most about the poor or the wealthy"
  
  
  You are putting words in my mouth which I never said and don't believe. I thought you were better than that. 
  
  
  Now let's be technical. Tax revenue should grow as long as the population is growing which it is. Cutting taxes on the wealthy takes away revenue, and I think that's a terrible idea while we are running up massive debt in a war. 
  
  
  The idea that tax revenues have increased, which they have, and the republicans lead by Bush have still turned a surplus into massive deficits is alarming. I find it hard to see how a real conservative can defend that record. 

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