Day: September 19, 2008

Jobs For Americans

A slogan of the Palin/McCain ticket.  A promise of more joibs created if they are elected.  Nice slogan, but where will thew jobs come from?  Oh yeah, tax cuts will produce more jobs.  Thinking……we have had tax cuts for about 8 years and the unemployment rate keeps climbing to where it is now, at 6.1%.  When Bush took office it was in the 4% neighborhood.  So now explain how the tax cuts will create Jobs, if you please.

In April he said:

In addition to rapid and targeted help for those families hurt by the mortgage crisis, it is essential to reduce the burdens on businesses and workers by lowering taxes, streamlining regulation, tackling health care costs, opening markets to American goods and helping those workers in need. Today’s news also underlines the need to focus on innovation, which grows the economy and creates an urgent need for effective worker re-training.

Basically, this is his message after every jobs report….tax cuts and incentives will create 2 million jobs in the years to come.

From Obama’s , The Blueprint For Change, there are the usual sub-texts about job creation and poverty.  But as with McCain there is NO direct confrontation for the creation of jobs, only vague crap about this program will create “x” amount of jobs, but nowhere do they give specifics.  Like I said just vague promises that may or may not be successful at creating needed employment.

Palin Univited To UN Protest

Organizers of an anti-Iran rally next week have dropped Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin from the event, days after Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton pulled out.

The National Coalition to Stop Iran Now said Thursday that it would put on a rally without “American political personalities” and Palin won’t be there.

The move angered Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who accused Democratic rivals of having his running mate disinvited. All Americans should agree on the need to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he said.

“Governor Palin was pleased to accept an invitation to address this rally and show her resolve on this grave national security issue,” McCain said in a statement. He blamed “Democratic partisans” and Barack Obama’s campaign for pressing organizers to dump Palin.

The Republican ticket of John McCain and Palin is working hard to win over disappointed Clinton supporters, particularly women voters. And Obama, who beat Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, has been trying to assure Jewish voters that he is firmly committed to Israel’s security.

McCain’s campaign did not explain why it thinks Democrats and the Obama camp were behind the rescinded invitation.

The Palin camp criticized Clinton for backing out, saying all parties should rally together in opposition to the threat posed by a nuclear Iran.

A Review Of The Afghan Strategy

The Pentagon is taking a close look at its war strategy in Afghanistan in the face of rising violence from an increasingly complex insurgency, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday.

In Washington, a senior U.S. official told Reuters the State Department was conducting its own formal review expected to last several weeks, indicating a broader rethink by the Bush administration of its strategy in Afghanistan.

Gates declined to say if a formal or informal review had been launched by the Pentagon but noted the United States had previously examined its strategy in Iraq — a review that resulted in major changes, including a boost in troop numbers.

“We are taking a close look at it and I don’t know whether the results of that will be a significant change in strategy or just some adjustments,” Gates told reporters in London.

“We did that in Iraq and we made a change in strategy in Iraq, and we are going to continue to look at the situation in Afghanistan,” said Gates, who visited Afghanistan this week before flying to London for a meeting with NATO counterparts.

Upon reading this piece I was wondering how they would work the “surge” into the conversation–BAM!  There it is!

Credit Is Getting Tighter

The latest outgrowth of the housing crisis, the breakdown on Wall Street, threatens to gradually corrode economic activity on Main Street, mainly by disabling the credit on which so many everyday transactions depend — but also by frightening people.

Lenders of all types had already been raising the bar for borrowers, turning away all but the best customers. This week, they became even less willing to part with their money, further crimping budgets and family spending.

An economy propelled by easy credit for more than a decade is fraying as credit disappears. American Express, to take one striking example, is reducing the maximum credit limit for half of its tens of millions of cardholders

Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of American economic activity and has been slowing as the value of homes falls. Although the economy is not yet in a formal recession, consumer spending in June and July grew only because consumers paid more for the same goods. After factoring in higher prices, they actually bought less.

Access to credit becomes harder, houses losing value, food prices rising and the only good news is that gas is fairly stable, for now.  The consumer, the worker, is in the hole and no way to get out and it will be interesting to see how the voter votes, in whom they place their trust.

Hagel On Palin

Sorry…no sarcasm intended.

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said his party’s vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, lacks foreign policy experience and called it a “stretch” to say she’s qualified to be president.

“She doesn’t have any foreign policy credentials,” Hagel said in an interview published Thursday by the Omaha World-Herald. “You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don’t know what you can say. You can’t say anything.”

“I think it’s a stretch to, in any way, to say that she’s got the experience to be president of the United States,” Hagel said.

Hagel, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in July and had said he would have considered serving as Obama’s running mate.

Seems the Palin-ization of American is beginning to fade.

Biden On Taxes

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden acknowledged yesterday the wealthy would pay more taxes if he and Barack Obama are in the White House, but he put an interesting spin on it.

It’s time to be patriotic . . . time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut,” Biden said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Republican John McCain pounced on the remark. “Raising taxes in a tough economy isn’t patriotic,” he said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “It’s not a badge of honor. It’s just dumb policy.”

Trying to find the right tone on the Wall Street crisis, McCain also went for the tried and true in a new TV ad yesterday: Warn voters that his Democratic opponent is a tax-and-spend liberal. The ad warns of huge spending increases, pork-barrel projects, and “painful taxes.” “Can your family afford that?” the announcer concludes.

I do not know if I can stretch it enopugh to say that higher taxes is patriotic, but it is an election cycle and the term is used liberally.

Obama’s proposals, however, would lower the tax bill for the vast majority of taxpayers, and by letting President Bush’s tax cuts lapse would raise income taxes on those earning $250,000 or more a year.

I am sure that soimewhere someone can make the case that the wealthy need to keep more of their money, but I cannot defend that.