Results tagged “Election 2010” from Bill's Words

Wow. Some eye-openers in here.

Go. Read. Now.

Here.

I find it very interesting that the buzz surrounding Texas Governor Rick Perry’s entry into the Republican presidential candidate field seems to be centering around his faith and public declaration of his Christianity.

It doesn’t seem to be centered around his state’s economic growth and job creation. It seems to be centered around his faith, of all things.

Maybe that’s interesting to some people, but with 76% of Americans identifying themselves as Christians, my question is, Why? Are the remaining 24% of you scared for some reason? How about the Christians in the crowd? What’s got you all so uptight?

Are you afraid that he might pray you into economic health? (Surely he didn’t govern Texas into health—he just prayed, right?)

Are you afraid that he might bless you and you might not want to be blessed? (Don’t sneeze around him!)

Are you afraid that he might base his morals, not on his frail human feelings, but upon a codified set of values? (That’s the Bible, in case you were wondering, and a big part of it applies to non-Christians, too.)

Are you afraid that he might pray for guidance as President? (If God answers, then is that a bad thing? And if He doesn’t and Rick Perry makes up his own answers, is that any worse than anybody else?)

Are you concerned that he might stuff his religion down your throat, passing laws willy-nilly establishing a state religion, forcing you to worship his God, over the dead bodies of the Congress and Supreme Court—you know, the other two branches of government which establish that fabled system of checks and balances?!

Good grief. Go do some real work and focus on the real issues at hand. Does he have more experience than, say, the current sitting President? Has he grown the economy he was in charge of better than the current sitting President has his own? Has he demonstrated a willingness to lead the charge from in front of the troops instead of secretively from behind closed doors?

This is the stuff you should be focusing on, not whether he believes in the Christian God or in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (though that would be really, really entertaining).

So, go on! Dig! But don’t forget to be fair… and dig through Obama’s record, too. Oh… that’s right… You didn’t bother to do that in 2008, so I don’t expect you to do it this time, either. Sigh. Well, at least we’ll know what we’re getting when Rick Perry is elected in 2012. Instead of someone who promises vague concepts with no track record to speak of, we’ll have a thoroughly-vetted candidate whose record will speak volumes for itself.

And you’ll still be stuck with Mr. Hope and Change. Good luck with that.

John Gruber, widely respected Apple pundit, says:

What’s fascinating is that against this backdrop, last week’s election went to the Republicans, who admit that their top priority is passing large tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans. I know much has been written about this, but I think it defies easy explanation how economic policies that benefit so very few enjoy the support of so many

Two things jump immediately to mind:

• He still doesn’t understand that the incredible leftward list that this country underwent in the last two years has been rejected as being too far to the left, regardless of the policies of the winners. The election’s results pretty clearly announce, Our bad¹, that was too far.

• Everybody wants to win the lottery. Everybody wants to make astronomical amounts of money as a movie star, sports star, or highly-paid CEO. But nobody wants to see those winnings or “earnings” taxed so as to discourage those who aspire to win or work. Why bother buying a lottery ticket or auditioning repeatedly or practicing if the only thing you’ll get for your effort is taxed?

Not that I’m saying that I necessarily agree 100% with the economic policies of either party. But if we’re going to go as far as to tax unearned income, such as those that I get by making smart stock market decisions (I think “deserved”—the governments sees “lucky”), we might as well tax the hell out of Tiger Woods and the like because their unearned income is far more than what they should get paid for a round of golf or for posing with a pair of shoes. I wouldn’t want that, though.

Unfortunately, we’re already headed down that path, what with the definition of a rich single person being earnings of $200,000 per year and a rich couple being earnings of $250,000 per year (that’s combined).² Anything more is clearly too much.

I guess that’s the price we have to pay for working hard enough to buy food for our families, pay our bills, pay our school loans, and pay our business loans, none of which are tax deductible.

¹ Note that I place the blame on the voters, not those elected. They probably thought, in spite of the polls, that they were just fulfilling their mandate.

² Here’s a reference to the marriage penalty and the health care reform bill. It was written before the bill’s passage, but it made it through and is, in fact, referenced in my corporation’s health care plan descriptions this year. Frankly, I’m not so sure that if I were part of a LGBT couple that I’d be fighting for equal treatment…

Article here.

Betcha’ didn’t see that coming, did you?

If you ask any eighth-grader about why we have three branches of government, you’ll likely get a blank look until you mention, “Checks and….” Then you’ll get “Balances!”

And that is what tomorrow is all about, folks, achieving balance. It is not good for the government to be dominated by any one ideology or party. That does not reflect the makeup of our country, and when it happens, a very small minority is satisfied, and most people end up unhappy. It wasn’t good in the early part of this century when the Republicans ran the show (poorly), nor is it good now when the Democrats are running the show (also poorly).

So the way I look at voting tomorrow is: It’s not about achieving your views, it’s about achieving balance to their views.

Go. Vote. Achieve balance.

Money quote from this op-ed piece by Julian E. Zelizer, emphasis mine:

The study found that Americans are philosophically conservative but operationally liberal. While they do express strong distrust of government in general, when asked about specific programs they usually voice their support. More Americans have more negative views of government than they did 10 years ago, yet most people still consider Social Security and Medicare to be “very important” and almost half support government regulation of health care.

If you’re wondering why Americans are rejecting the current Congress and why Democrats are hurting, wonder no more, though the article goes on for a few hundred words more and he misses the glaring, huge point.

The point is this: When the Congress does something (Obamacare) of which less than half the people in the country approve (and which this writer and others view as a victory, nonetheless) and are more negative about government than before, the Congress should expect some turnover in the party which did the doing.

Or did everybody forget 2008 already?

Reuters deals out a shameless plug for Obama. The headline reads “job creation,” but then the article fails to mention the actual job creation.

You can read the article here. It mentions “jobs” once but devotes the vast majority of its column space to the ongoing Rhode Island/Democratic/Republican battles.

How’s that about jobs? It isn’t, so the headline is nothing more than campaigning for Obama.

If you successfully peddled “Hope” and “Change” as a successful campaign platform, I believe that does indeed qualify you as a snake oil expert. But if that’s all the media can get out of your message—again—then it is, indeed, a shallow message.

Source article here