But "The One" said he had had no contact with Blago to discuss this or any other matter and as we all know, no one must question "The One"'s story.
Even if his own staff members say that they (meaning the transition team and not necessarily "The One" himself) have discussed it with Blago's office and you happen to have a picture of "The One" and Blago talking together last week at a national governors meeting does not mean you have the right to questions the official narrative.
Except for that meeting last week at the National Governors Association.
Not that it was a formal meeting or anything but they are on film talking to each other just one week prior to Obama's claim to have had "no contact" with Blago.
Yes, simple student government members who are given control over an $100/student mandatory fee. Carelton currently has about 24,000 students of various types (full time/part time, undergrad, grad, etc..), with most paying that fee. Did your highschool student council have upwards of 2 million in their annual operating budget?
They also run the stores, pubs, and various centres on campus and decide what student groups can receive funding or facility use. So while most students tend to ignore them, as they found out a couple years ago when they decided to have a sympathetic strike to support a university union, when the CUSA decides to do something based on their ideological leanings, instead of whats in the best interest of the population they represent, a lot of people can become affected.
They may have little impact on what's taught in the classroom, but unlike HS, people in University tend to spend a lot more of their free time on campus or doing campus related activites and as soon as you leave the professors class you are being impacted by the decisions CUSA make, in one form or another.
I believe most students just tend to ignore them so only the more radical members of the student body bother to run and/or vote; though this was a big enough mess that there is a recall drive in place for the CUSA president and the member who tabled the motion. The silver lining in all this is that the student body may just start to pay attention.
And honestly, not even the faculty likes them since they have at times even taken it upon themselves to interrupt classes during their 'crusade of the day' drives.
If nothing else they do provide a good source of material for all of us to use to poke fun at our Alumni friends.
If only. This is just par for the course in the CUSA's attempt to PCifiy the campus.
Their last major controversy was a ban they put in place to prevent any pro-life groups (religous or otherwise) from receiving any of the standard student club funds or access to any meeting facilities on campus, regardless of the number of members or how long they existed on campus. And these weren't militant "storm abortion clinic" type groups, just simply groups that did not share the pro-abortion policies of the CUSA.
Some people just shouldn't be put in positions of power.
It's amazing how much money CUSA cost the university in Alumni giving every year. Every Carleton grad I know refuses to give based solely on CUSA; and the fact I can see the main campus from my office window I can tell you I know quite a few grads.
That argument only makes sense if the company in question is providing the transportation. From all I've seen Pickupal is exactly what it sounds like, an online service for members to hook up and provide each other with transportation alternatives.
The company doesn't actually drive anyone anywhere and they don't charge a transportation fee. In effect, it's the modern day equivalant of putting an ad on the billboard at the grocery store.
And there are already laws in place for people seeking to set themselves up as mini-bus companies and if found they can face heavy fines and possible jail time but that has nothing to do with the Pickupal service.
No, but it is a bad thing to completely change your policy whenever someone questions you on it and then act as if your previous statements never happened.
And if you look at his site there are still pages that say "require". It was only removed from the above linked page because, as with many other statements made by Obama (i.e. "without preconditions"), it was becoming a liability and a quick edit was their best way to handle the fuss that was being raised.
Ah, but like a lot of Obama's past statements and policy positions that most people would be uncomfortable with, the term "require" has since gone down the memory whole and the statement has been completely rewritten to make it much more hope and changey. And since most Obama supporters seem to have no concept of 'the past' (since Obama doesn't seem to have one according to the press) don't expect anyone to acknowledge the previous version.
Yes we can deploy our personnel anywhere in the world rather rapidly and our JTF2 are among the best in the world at what they do. Our snipers routinely outshoot their counterparts from around the world, and there have even been cases where American sniper teams gave their rifles to the Canadians because they knew they could better handle them when the s#$t started flying. But all that doesn't change the fact that part of the reason our soldiers are so good is because, due to lack of equipment and lack of numbers, out of necessity they have had to become jacks of all trades. We simply do not meet any of our international obligations, in terms of committed troops, simply because for so long coasted off our southern neighbours.
My cousin was in charge of mechanics at CFB Petawawa (not sure exactly what his rank is now since I haven't seen him in about 2 years) and he used to tell us stories of being in theatre and having to order parts from GM for their vehicles. The Americans, on the other hand, had all the capabilities of machining complete replacement parts for almost everything they had, on site. It's that type of thngs that makes a huge difference in how your military can do their jobs.
Only recently, as you pointed out, are we beginning to rebuild our military to a respectable point and starting to replace Korean war era equipment.
The facts are, that as things are now, if we need to get any of our equipement from point A to point B in any hurry we are almost completely dependant on other sources of transport (often American). Just a few years ago we had to basically hijack a commercial transport in the Halifax harbour because they wouldn't unload our heavy gear because some middle man forgot to send the cheque. That's hardly a position a properly funded military would find itself in.
I almost wish I hadn't commented eariler so I could use mod points to boost you up.
You hit on two of the points that just drive me crazy; pay inequality and lost jobs, especially in the automotive industry.
Most of the studies on pay issues use a very odd comparisons to 'prove' inequality. They don't take two people with similar experience in a single job and compare but instead rank jobs and then compare. So a secretary could be compared to a general labourer in a mill, or other such job, regardless of the available labour pool.
On the car front I got to watch all the Michigan Democrat commercials over the election and they kept railing about how Bush lost 400,000 jobs in the state. Not one mention anywhere about an automotive industry that has managed to put itself on the verge of bankruptcy by building cars no one wants or unions that have managed to price their employees out of the market.
It's not a Presidents job to make sure domestic companies suceed despite their idiotic business plans. They need to just make sure the environment is competitive with other countries and then get the hell out of the way. Socialist capitalism does not work.
Yet their profits, as a percentage of expenditures, still only puts them in the middle of most fortune 500 companies with between 8-11%.
So how do you determine how much is too much profit to make? Since everyone just ignores percentages and stays fixated on actual dollar amounts whats the magic number? And if you tie a punitive tax on a dollar amount what's to stop the oil companies from adjusting their production levels to impact prices in such a way as to make as much money on less product and therefore maximize ROI while minimizing taxes paid? And in those lean years when oil companies don't make as much as now can they demand a subsidy to make up the difference based on the excesses they were forced to pay when they were making money?
Add to that the fact the Dems in governmanet are working their hardest to reduce domestic production and the explosion in demand for oil in developing economies and it's very hard to see a situation where effectively declaring war on the oil companies will benefit the US but I guess that's just the price some people are willing to pay when so much of their political ideology is based on class warfare.
It's hard to compare a coutry with the population of a medium size city with a coutry that both dwarfs it in population and physicaly displacement.
With higher populations come a lot more problems. Not to mention when's the last time you saw a major disaster occur around the world and the leaders of that country cry out for the Finnish to send in their military for aid?
Simply put the US carries a lot more weight on it's shoulders both domestically and internationally than most of the EU combined. Hey and I'm from Canada where, like most of Europe, we get to skimp on a lot of things (especially military spending) because we know the American's will keep us covered.
Population is not a true measure of density. In terms of density Toronto is basically just on par with many US cities, both large and small. Montreal, being primarily and island, is actually much more densely populated. (all measures are/square mile).
Toronto: 10,287 Philly: 10,882 Montreal: 11,496 New York: 10,482 Miami: 11,483 Chicago: 12,649 Ottawa: 791 (4th largest Canadian city)
These were just randomly chosen as they came to mind.
So yes, Canadians tend to live in a only a small portion of the country but American cities still tend to be more dense (take from that what you want). So where most of Canada's overpopulation problems are confined to 1 or 2 areas in the entire country, which makes them rather easy to predict and handle from a Federal perspective for such things as elections, it's a much more widespread issue in the States and especially problematic when you have no common standards.
I honestly don't understand people from outside the US who don't understand why the lines are so long.
In Canada our choices fit on a single piece of paper, about the size of a note passed in class, since we only vote for the representative for our ridings. The whole voting process should take about 20 seconds, and thats if you review you decision.
In the US (and God only knows why) they see fit to vote for everything from the various levels of court judge in the State, sherrifs, prosecutors, congressman, some Senators, dog catcher, any propositions some committee raised enough signatures for and a dozen other political positions in addition to the President.
Add to all that the fact there is no overriding federal standards for ballots or registrations so that no two districts ballots have to look the same and some polls are doing on the spot voter registration, it's very easy to see why someone who wants to actually vote the full ballot can take a long time.
Then there's also the fact they have 10 times our population in a smaller geographical size thereby resulting in a much higher concentration of voters per polling station.
Step 1 to getting all this election mess cleared up is to start staggering some of these election cycles so that not everything falls on super tuesday. Step 2 is to get the states together to try and set some common rules for registration and vote processing. Of course thats asking for a lot because in some cases you get tightwad legislators who just don't want to spend any cash upgrading their systems and in others you get more corrupt pols who prefer to keep the mess they have on hand to make 'fixing' things easier.
if by Presedential you mean "evading any probing question and refusing to give open press conferences for over a month" then yeah, Obama's got the Presedential thing down pat.
And half of the mud flinging was from him onto him so that he could accuse his opponents of doing it. How many times did Obama himself mention his race as being used against him? Compare that to how many times McCain ever attacked him on race; excluding all those 'code words' the press worked overtime to find. (When 'socialist' becomes code for 'black' you know they're really reaching.)
It's relatively easy to appear above the fray when you can just send your talking points to the press and let them do all the attack work. In many cases the reporters have gotten so lazy they even use the exact word for word copy, they don't even bother to pretend it's not straight from the campaign.
Freddie and Fannie essentially created the sub prime market as a way to boost lower income home ownership. And they didn't have to actually have the bad paper on their books to do the damage, they merely had to be there with the guarentee that they would back them up if there was a problem. That, along with the CRA (passed under Carter) created the perfect storm for bad loans.
Together they control over 50% of the US mortgages and when any branch of the Federal government (which you could consider Freddie and Fannie as they do not exist by the same rules as the regular market players) control that much of a a supposedly free market it ceases to be free, no matter what regulations you put on it.
You can think of the whole thing in the same way as a dollar bill. In and of itself it a piece of paper with no real value until some large entity guarentees it. Now the government itself may not have most of the bills in the US in it's hands at any time (although I'm sure all branches will keep trying to remedy that) but their mere existance still sets the value of that bill. If they collapse the bill is esentially meaningless no matter who is holding on to it. So if you collected a lot of paper money on the governments guarentee you are left out in the cold.
Paul Krugman is also a raving anti-Republican pundit who has been predicting an economic disaster of every type since the day Bush took office. And since even Clinton foresaw this mess developing while he was still in office, his predictive abilities are not all that amazing.
And yes, the average family does pay more than $12,000 for a plan, $12,106 to be precise, by the Times own reporting. Still much less than the over 14k a top bracket earner would have to make to not receive a credit under MCCain's plan (once again from the Times own reporting).
As for the impact of the removal of state borders I'll use the summary from your above linked 'realistic comparison' article:
On the other hand, John McCain is looking to attempt promotion of greater competition among health insurance companies, allowing rates to fall from the growing competition across state lines (without any use of the governmentâ(TM)s power). The purpose of the plan is allow freedom of choice and puts Americans in the position to insist on lower costs for higher quality, just as we do with any other product or service we purchase.
And finally, anyone who thinks deregulation and not government interference to control the mortgage markets (though the use of Freddie and Fannie) was the cause for this whole mess is seriouly deluding themselves. And I believe it was McCain who attempted to put controls on Freddie and Fannie a few years ago by co-sponsoring legislation, while it was Obama who wrote a letter only after the market started to collapse. Even then the latter had no details or suggestions over and above, "maybe we should talk".
Most of the mess with the current stock markets were caused by Congresses interference through the use of agencies like Freddie and Fannie and not through any sort of deregulation.
They essentially created a market for worthless mortgages, backed by the Federal goernment, where none would exist in a true free market system.
It simply wasn't deregulation that caused this mess.
And there is a difference between deregulation and oversight. In general the government should be in the oversight business, making sure that companies follow whatever rules are out there instead of simply making more and more arbitrary rules to try and dictate what direction they want the markets to take. Lack of oversight is what allows companies to continue year after year building their house of cards until finally someone notices and they all come tumbling down.
You do understand that the low infant mortality rate in Cuba is also directly tied into their extremly high abortion rates, almost double the US.
Simply put if a fetus is seen to have any defects it is often aborted before birth thereby drastically reducing difficult births and mortality statistics. Of course that doesn't stop the fact that almost 3 times as many women die in childbirth in the health care nirvana of Cuba than the US.
In the US, people try to take care of their children, even if they know they won't be perfect.
So which system do you prefer again?
Numbers don't always mean what you think they mean, and a hospital system in which patients are routinely advised to bring in their own sheets and food to avoid lice and parasite infested 'hospital' bedding is not what I would call a shining example of modern medicine.
Much of the difference in expected living is the fact that when people are free to do what they want, as they are in western societies, they tend to do stupid things; drive fast cars, each unhealthy foods, bungee jump, hang glide, etc..; all types of activities that puts a persons life at risk outside of whatever type of health care you receive. So you could choose to move to Cuba, where those choices really aren't available to you and live till you're 75, or you could remain in the US (presumably) and live however you like.
I don't think you quite understand how taxes work. If you're employer health plan benefits are worth $12,000 you don't pay $12000 in taxes, you just pay your regular tax bracket rate on the $12000 as if it was income. Even according to the NYT review, it would essentially take a plan with a value of 14.2k to negate the McCain credit, and that's only if you're in the top tax bracket.
Of course there are some States with extrodinarily high insurance rates but then again McCain's plan to remove cross border restrictions should help level those out too.
As for single payer systems, they are great in theory and work well enough for small things that don't require expensive diagnostic machinery or specialized surgery. However, the French, British and Canadian systems have all shown that single payer systems lead to an entirely new set of problems (wait times measured in months and years, reduced access to high level specialists, higher taxes) and the entire population of those 3 countries together is barely half of the US.
The American system is definately in need of repair but the other side of the street is not all rainbows and flowers and too many people seem to think.
Actually economists have about the same ability to judge world markets as your average cinnamon-ring tail cebus monkey (well actually the monkey has a better record 4 years running), they just have more ways of covering up their pure speculation with fancy talk.
I believe you missed the point of the entire story, it's not that person 1 is worth more than person 10, it's just that progressive taxation can work but it does have it's breaking point. Continually complaining that Person 10 is getting more from a tax break (when percentagewise it's almost identical or even in the favor of the lower earners) and then trying to offload everyone elses share to them does not work after a point.
And while I'm sure it would be terrible if every garbage person took the year off, I'm pretty sure that at least a few of the 47,000 former Micosoft employees and they hundreds of thousands of workers in spin off industries (from contract programmers to fast food cooks) would be willing to help clean up for the possibility of a steady job when Gates moves all MS jobs to Ireland to escape the increasing corporate taxes. Of course they'd all be making far less then previously and Gates wouldn't notice the difference except that his bank card now says 'Bank of Ireland' and not 'Washington Trust'.
And if you want a real world example just look at the US luxury boat industry, or complete lack thereof. Whats used to be a thriving domestic indutry was completely destroyed when some politicians decided that they could throw on some extra taxes on to Mr. 10's boat purchase. The outcome was two fold in that the domestic boat market completely died (leaving a lot of Mr. 1-9's out of work) all the while moving a lot of sales to European markets. So the money was still spent, but it was spent at someone else' bar leaving those without the option of moving footing more of the bill then ever before.
Not to nit pick too much but I'm just wondering about you statement that "he's a talented Senator". Politician maybe, Senator, hardly.
I have yet to see anyone give any legislative example of Obama's political prowess. His record of actual legislation is almost universally on noncontroversial subjects; the kind that get voice votes because they are unopposed. On most real issues he tends to vote 'present' claim it's "above my paygrade" or simply follow the party line.
His handling of the housing market crash being a prime example. When the market was already crashing, over a year ago, he wrote a letter that was so general to have absolutely no meaning. Then when everything hit the fan he intentionally kept away from Washington and basically said 'if they need me they'll call me", having no real opinion of his own except that this was the worst crisis sine the great depression (but not worthy of his time).
Sometimes I wonder if he even knows he's allowed to offer real legislation or if he thinks only the 'grownups' are allowed to do that.
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Politics 101. Always have an answer; the question is irrelevant.
But "The One" said he had had no contact with Blago to discuss this or any other matter and as we all know, no one must question "The One"'s story.
Even if his own staff members say that they (meaning the transition team and not necessarily "The One" himself) have discussed it with Blago's office and you happen to have a picture of "The One" and Blago talking together last week at a national governors meeting does not mean you have the right to questions the official narrative.
Except for that meeting last week at the National Governors Association.
Not that it was a formal meeting or anything but they are on film talking to each other just one week prior to Obama's claim to have had "no contact" with Blago.
Yes, simple student government members who are given control over an $100/student mandatory fee. Carelton currently has about 24,000 students of various types (full time/part time, undergrad, grad, etc..), with most paying that fee. Did your highschool student council have upwards of 2 million in their annual operating budget?
They also run the stores, pubs, and various centres on campus and decide what student groups can receive funding or facility use. So while most students tend to ignore them, as they found out a couple years ago when they decided to have a sympathetic strike to support a university union, when the CUSA decides to do something based on their ideological leanings, instead of whats in the best interest of the population they represent, a lot of people can become affected.
They may have little impact on what's taught in the classroom, but unlike HS, people in University tend to spend a lot more of their free time on campus or doing campus related activites and as soon as you leave the professors class you are being impacted by the decisions CUSA make, in one form or another.
I believe most students just tend to ignore them so only the more radical members of the student body bother to run and/or vote; though this was a big enough mess that there is a recall drive in place for the CUSA president and the member who tabled the motion. The silver lining in all this is that the student body may just start to pay attention.
And honestly, not even the faculty likes them since they have at times even taken it upon themselves to interrupt classes during their 'crusade of the day' drives.
If nothing else they do provide a good source of material for all of us to use to poke fun at our Alumni friends.
If only. This is just par for the course in the CUSA's attempt to PCifiy the campus.
Their last major controversy was a ban they put in place to prevent any pro-life groups (religous or otherwise) from receiving any of the standard student club funds or access to any meeting facilities on campus, regardless of the number of members or how long they existed on campus. And these weren't militant "storm abortion clinic" type groups, just simply groups that did not share the pro-abortion policies of the CUSA.
Some people just shouldn't be put in positions of power.
It's amazing how much money CUSA cost the university in Alumni giving every year. Every Carleton grad I know refuses to give based solely on CUSA; and the fact I can see the main campus from my office window I can tell you I know quite a few grads.
That argument only makes sense if the company in question is providing the transportation. From all I've seen Pickupal is exactly what it sounds like, an online service for members to hook up and provide each other with transportation alternatives.
The company doesn't actually drive anyone anywhere and they don't charge a transportation fee. In effect, it's the modern day equivalant of putting an ad on the billboard at the grocery store.
And there are already laws in place for people seeking to set themselves up as mini-bus companies and if found they can face heavy fines and possible jail time but that has nothing to do with the Pickupal service.
So yes, the story is as ridiculous as it sounds.
No, but it is a bad thing to completely change your policy whenever someone questions you on it and then act as if your previous statements never happened.
And if you look at his site there are still pages that say "require". It was only removed from the above linked page because, as with many other statements made by Obama (i.e. "without preconditions"), it was becoming a liability and a quick edit was their best way to handle the fuss that was being raised.
Ah, but like a lot of Obama's past statements and policy positions that most people would be uncomfortable with, the term "require" has since gone down the memory whole and the statement has been completely rewritten to make it much more hope and changey. And since most Obama supporters seem to have no concept of 'the past' (since Obama doesn't seem to have one according to the press) don't expect anyone to acknowledge the previous version.
Yes we can deploy our personnel anywhere in the world rather rapidly and our JTF2 are among the best in the world at what they do. Our snipers routinely outshoot their counterparts from around the world, and there have even been cases where American sniper teams gave their rifles to the Canadians because they knew they could better handle them when the s#$t started flying. But all that doesn't change the fact that part of the reason our soldiers are so good is because, due to lack of equipment and lack of numbers, out of necessity they have had to become jacks of all trades. We simply do not meet any of our international obligations, in terms of committed troops, simply because for so long coasted off our southern neighbours.
My cousin was in charge of mechanics at CFB Petawawa (not sure exactly what his rank is now since I haven't seen him in about 2 years) and he used to tell us stories of being in theatre and having to order parts from GM for their vehicles. The Americans, on the other hand, had all the capabilities of machining complete replacement parts for almost everything they had, on site. It's that type of thngs that makes a huge difference in how your military can do their jobs.
Only recently, as you pointed out, are we beginning to rebuild our military to a respectable point and starting to replace Korean war era equipment.
The facts are, that as things are now, if we need to get any of our equipement from point A to point B in any hurry we are almost completely dependant on other sources of transport (often American). Just a few years ago we had to basically hijack a commercial transport in the Halifax harbour because they wouldn't unload our heavy gear because some middle man forgot to send the cheque. That's hardly a position a properly funded military would find itself in.
I almost wish I hadn't commented eariler so I could use mod points to boost you up.
You hit on two of the points that just drive me crazy; pay inequality and lost jobs, especially in the automotive industry.
Most of the studies on pay issues use a very odd comparisons to 'prove' inequality. They don't take two people with similar experience in a single job and compare but instead rank jobs and then compare. So a secretary could be compared to a general labourer in a mill, or other such job, regardless of the available labour pool.
On the car front I got to watch all the Michigan Democrat commercials over the election and they kept railing about how Bush lost 400,000 jobs in the state. Not one mention anywhere about an automotive industry that has managed to put itself on the verge of bankruptcy by building cars no one wants or unions that have managed to price their employees out of the market.
It's not a Presidents job to make sure domestic companies suceed despite their idiotic business plans. They need to just make sure the environment is competitive with other countries and then get the hell out of the way. Socialist capitalism does not work.
Yet their profits, as a percentage of expenditures, still only puts them in the middle of most fortune 500 companies with between 8-11%.
So how do you determine how much is too much profit to make? Since everyone just ignores percentages and stays fixated on actual dollar amounts whats the magic number? And if you tie a punitive tax on a dollar amount what's to stop the oil companies from adjusting their production levels to impact prices in such a way as to make as much money on less product and therefore maximize ROI while minimizing taxes paid? And in those lean years when oil companies don't make as much as now can they demand a subsidy to make up the difference based on the excesses they were forced to pay when they were making money?
Add to that the fact the Dems in governmanet are working their hardest to reduce domestic production and the explosion in demand for oil in developing economies and it's very hard to see a situation where effectively declaring war on the oil companies will benefit the US but I guess that's just the price some people are willing to pay when so much of their political ideology is based on class warfare.
It's hard to compare a coutry with the population of a medium size city with a coutry that both dwarfs it in population and physicaly displacement.
With higher populations come a lot more problems. Not to mention when's the last time you saw a major disaster occur around the world and the leaders of that country cry out for the Finnish to send in their military for aid?
Simply put the US carries a lot more weight on it's shoulders both domestically and internationally than most of the EU combined. Hey and I'm from Canada where, like most of Europe, we get to skimp on a lot of things (especially military spending) because we know the American's will keep us covered.
Population is not a true measure of density. In terms of density Toronto is basically just on par with many US cities, both large and small. Montreal, being primarily and island, is actually much more densely populated. (all measures are /square mile).
Toronto: 10,287
Philly: 10,882
Montreal: 11,496
New York: 10,482
Miami: 11,483
Chicago: 12,649
Ottawa: 791 (4th largest Canadian city)
These were just randomly chosen as they came to mind.
So yes, Canadians tend to live in a only a small portion of the country but American cities still tend to be more dense (take from that what you want). So where most of Canada's overpopulation problems are confined to 1 or 2 areas in the entire country, which makes them rather easy to predict and handle from a Federal perspective for such things as elections, it's a much more widespread issue in the States and especially problematic when you have no common standards.
I honestly don't understand people from outside the US who don't understand why the lines are so long.
In Canada our choices fit on a single piece of paper, about the size of a note passed in class, since we only vote for the representative for our ridings. The whole voting process should take about 20 seconds, and thats if you review you decision.
In the US (and God only knows why) they see fit to vote for everything from the various levels of court judge in the State, sherrifs, prosecutors, congressman, some Senators, dog catcher, any propositions some committee raised enough signatures for and a dozen other political positions in addition to the President.
Add to all that the fact there is no overriding federal standards for ballots or registrations so that no two districts ballots have to look the same and some polls are doing on the spot voter registration, it's very easy to see why someone who wants to actually vote the full ballot can take a long time.
Then there's also the fact they have 10 times our population in a smaller geographical size thereby resulting in a much higher concentration of voters per polling station.
Step 1 to getting all this election mess cleared up is to start staggering some of these election cycles so that not everything falls on super tuesday. Step 2 is to get the states together to try and set some common rules for registration and vote processing. Of course thats asking for a lot because in some cases you get tightwad legislators who just don't want to spend any cash upgrading their systems and in others you get more corrupt pols who prefer to keep the mess they have on hand to make 'fixing' things easier.
if by Presedential you mean "evading any probing question and refusing to give open press conferences for over a month" then yeah, Obama's got the Presedential thing down pat.
And half of the mud flinging was from him onto him so that he could accuse his opponents of doing it. How many times did Obama himself mention his race as being used against him? Compare that to how many times McCain ever attacked him on race; excluding all those 'code words' the press worked overtime to find. (When 'socialist' becomes code for 'black' you know they're really reaching.)
It's relatively easy to appear above the fray when you can just send your talking points to the press and let them do all the attack work. In many cases the reporters have gotten so lazy they even use the exact word for word copy, they don't even bother to pretend it's not straight from the campaign.
Freddie and Fannie essentially created the sub prime market as a way to boost lower income home ownership. And they didn't have to actually have the bad paper on their books to do the damage, they merely had to be there with the guarentee that they would back them up if there was a problem. That, along with the CRA (passed under Carter) created the perfect storm for bad loans.
Together they control over 50% of the US mortgages and when any branch of the Federal government (which you could consider Freddie and Fannie as they do not exist by the same rules as the regular market players) control that much of a a supposedly free market it ceases to be free, no matter what regulations you put on it.
You can think of the whole thing in the same way as a dollar bill. In and of itself it a piece of paper with no real value until some large entity guarentees it. Now the government itself may not have most of the bills in the US in it's hands at any time (although I'm sure all branches will keep trying to remedy that) but their mere existance still sets the value of that bill. If they collapse the bill is esentially meaningless no matter who is holding on to it. So if you collected a lot of paper money on the governments guarentee you are left out in the cold.
Paul Krugman is also a raving anti-Republican pundit who has been predicting an economic disaster of every type since the day Bush took office. And since even Clinton foresaw this mess developing while he was still in office, his predictive abilities are not all that amazing.
And yes, the average family does pay more than $12,000 for a plan, $12,106 to be precise, by the Times own reporting. Still much less than the over 14k a top bracket earner would have to make to not receive a credit under MCCain's plan (once again from the Times own reporting).
As for the impact of the removal of state borders I'll use the summary from your above linked 'realistic comparison' article:
And finally, anyone who thinks deregulation and not government interference to control the mortgage markets (though the use of Freddie and Fannie) was the cause for this whole mess is seriouly deluding themselves. And I believe it was McCain who attempted to put controls on Freddie and Fannie a few years ago by co-sponsoring legislation, while it was Obama who wrote a letter only after the market started to collapse. Even then the latter had no details or suggestions over and above, "maybe we should talk".
Most of the mess with the current stock markets were caused by Congresses interference through the use of agencies like Freddie and Fannie and not through any sort of deregulation.
They essentially created a market for worthless mortgages, backed by the Federal goernment, where none would exist in a true free market system.
It simply wasn't deregulation that caused this mess.
And there is a difference between deregulation and oversight. In general the government should be in the oversight business, making sure that companies follow whatever rules are out there instead of simply making more and more arbitrary rules to try and dictate what direction they want the markets to take. Lack of oversight is what allows companies to continue year after year building their house of cards until finally someone notices and they all come tumbling down.
You do understand that the low infant mortality rate in Cuba is also directly tied into their extremly high abortion rates, almost double the US.
Simply put if a fetus is seen to have any defects it is often aborted before birth thereby drastically reducing difficult births and mortality statistics. Of course that doesn't stop the fact that almost 3 times as many women die in childbirth in the health care nirvana of Cuba than the US.
In the US, people try to take care of their children, even if they know they won't be perfect.
So which system do you prefer again?
Numbers don't always mean what you think they mean, and a hospital system in which patients are routinely advised to bring in their own sheets and food to avoid lice and parasite infested 'hospital' bedding is not what I would call a shining example of modern medicine.
Much of the difference in expected living is the fact that when people are free to do what they want, as they are in western societies, they tend to do stupid things; drive fast cars, each unhealthy foods, bungee jump, hang glide, etc..; all types of activities that puts a persons life at risk outside of whatever type of health care you receive. So you could choose to move to Cuba, where those choices really aren't available to you and live till you're 75, or you could remain in the US (presumably) and live however you like.
I don't think you quite understand how taxes work. If you're employer health plan benefits are worth $12,000 you don't pay $12000 in taxes, you just pay your regular tax bracket rate on the $12000 as if it was income. Even according to the NYT review, it would essentially take a plan with a value of 14.2k to negate the McCain credit, and that's only if you're in the top tax bracket.
Of course there are some States with extrodinarily high insurance rates but then again McCain's plan to remove cross border restrictions should help level those out too.
As for single payer systems, they are great in theory and work well enough for small things that don't require expensive diagnostic machinery or specialized surgery. However, the French, British and Canadian systems have all shown that single payer systems lead to an entirely new set of problems (wait times measured in months and years, reduced access to high level specialists, higher taxes) and the entire population of those 3 countries together is barely half of the US.
The American system is definately in need of repair but the other side of the street is not all rainbows and flowers and too many people seem to think.
Actually economists have about the same ability to judge world markets as your average cinnamon-ring tail cebus monkey (well actually the monkey has a better record 4 years running), they just have more ways of covering up their pure speculation with fancy talk.
I believe you missed the point of the entire story, it's not that person 1 is worth more than person 10, it's just that progressive taxation can work but it does have it's breaking point. Continually complaining that Person 10 is getting more from a tax break (when percentagewise it's almost identical or even in the favor of the lower earners) and then trying to offload everyone elses share to them does not work after a point.
And while I'm sure it would be terrible if every garbage person took the year off, I'm pretty sure that at least a few of the 47,000 former Micosoft employees and they hundreds of thousands of workers in spin off industries (from contract programmers to fast food cooks) would be willing to help clean up for the possibility of a steady job when Gates moves all MS jobs to Ireland to escape the increasing corporate taxes. Of course they'd all be making far less then previously and Gates wouldn't notice the difference except that his bank card now says 'Bank of Ireland' and not 'Washington Trust'.
And if you want a real world example just look at the US luxury boat industry, or complete lack thereof. Whats used to be a thriving domestic indutry was completely destroyed when some politicians decided that they could throw on some extra taxes on to Mr. 10's boat purchase. The outcome was two fold in that the domestic boat market completely died (leaving a lot of Mr. 1-9's out of work) all the while moving a lot of sales to European markets. So the money was still spent, but it was spent at someone else' bar leaving those without the option of moving footing more of the bill then ever before.
Not to nit pick too much but I'm just wondering about you statement that "he's a talented Senator". Politician maybe, Senator, hardly.
I have yet to see anyone give any legislative example of Obama's political prowess. His record of actual legislation is almost universally on noncontroversial subjects; the kind that get voice votes because they are unopposed. On most real issues he tends to vote 'present' claim it's "above my paygrade" or simply follow the party line.
His handling of the housing market crash being a prime example. When the market was already crashing, over a year ago, he wrote a letter that was so general to have absolutely no meaning. Then when everything hit the fan he intentionally kept away from Washington and basically said 'if they need me they'll call me", having no real opinion of his own except that this was the worst crisis sine the great depression (but not worthy of his time).
Sometimes I wonder if he even knows he's allowed to offer real legislation or if he thinks only the 'grownups' are allowed to do that.