Maybe they're setting up for good cop/bad cop.

"We're sorry we hired such a douche. The new guy is going to be much nicer about dragging my opponent through the slime."

Well, at least he's working for the campaign I want to lose. :lol:

Obama's campaign guy, David Axelrod:

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics...0,610634.story

This just in... Clinton surrogate says all you Obama supporters are "latte-drinking, Prius- driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies".

Damn, I'm O-fer on that score. :( Who do I have to vote for now?

Ugh.

Here's what's gonna happen. Clinton is going to push her supports to hate Obama so much that when she loses the Dem nomination, she'll have left the party so split the democrats will lose the general election.

All hail our new overlord John McCain.

At least it's not Romney or Huckabee.

Lot more trustfund babies than I thought out there. Obama has had over 920,000 (and rapidly climbing) people donate to his campaign. That's pretty amazing.

(counter currently here)
http://www.barackobama.com/index.php#

Awesome.

Clinton just gave herself another $6.4M just to make sure that even though she's got virtually no chance of getting the Democratic nod over Obama, she's going to be able to fight long enough to ensure McCain wins the Whitehouse due to a divided Democrat party. :roll:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...BnGqwD90GUIOG0

You said it 2 months ago... Negrodamus?

She is trying to buy a VP spot on the ticket, though I think Colin Powell would still make a compelling ticket.

I'm pretty sure Colin Powell has zero interest whatsoever in high office of any kind. I also doubt Clinton would take the VP. If she lost the nomination and Obama lost in the general, she'd be a shoe-in for the '12 nomination. And if he won, she could probably take on whoever his VP ends up being and potentially win the nomination then.

I thought both sides had already ruled out sharing a ticket, though I think an Obama/Clinton platform might actually work well. I just think that after such a hard fight for the primary, neither will want to campaign with the other.

Colin Powell is a party-loathing Republican. I don't see him running for the Democratic VP nomination. :lol:

What better opportunity could you imagine for a party-loathing republican. And talk about a change to the status quo.

It would definitely kick ass to see any of the remaining candidates actually think in terms of improving the country instead of filling their demographic gaps with their runningmate. But I don't see it happening this year.

We got the job done here in Cackalack. I can't believe this primary fight is still going though...

It is done. AP says nomination is "clinched".

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...54YCwD912RMEO0

Now the question is whether Clinton will step down before the convention.

Wow, have we really not discussed politics in almost 5 months?

I have a question that I'm sure you SMRT guys can answer.

Let's discuss this "redistribution of wealth." I don't understand it at all. The way the Repubs explain it, he will take MY money and straight up give it to somebody else who doesn't make as much as me. The way I understand this part of Obamas tax plan is that people making more than 250k will be taxed at a higher rate. Will that money then be used to fund programs designed to help lower income people? Or am I going to get taxed higher and then that money will be given to people making less? What am I missing here?

Obama's plan is basically a tax cut for everybody making less than $250k/year, and those making more than $250k/year will be taxed at pre-GWBush rates. I wouldn't call that "socialism" like the McCain/Drudge/FauxNews crowd tends to do. In fact Mcain opposed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy back when he was more of a real maverick, and nobody called him a socialist.

Here is an online calculator if you want to see what would happen to you if the plan gets implemented:
http://taxcut.barackobama.com/

A lot has been made of nothing IMO, simply because of the phrase "spread the wealth around a little". Fundamentally, both parties want to redistribute money around to save the economy... the difference is in how they want to do it.

The "standard" Republican method is via tax cuts to the rich. The idea is that by saving the big businesses money, they have more to spend in improving their business, which in turn creates more jobs, which in turn puts money into the hands of the middle class, who in turn are supposed to buy more stuff and therefore make the big businesses more successful, and thus upward-spiral the economy into better days. This is basically what they mean by "trickle down economics", in that you make policy changes to a few at the top of the pyramid that eventually make it down to everyone.

The Democrat method has the same goals, but focuses on the middle class first. The idea is you cut the middle classes taxes so they have money to spend in the economy that eventually makes its way into the hands of the big businesses. But in order to pay for gov't services, taxes have to be raised on the rich... but IMO, the top 1% can afford the cost much more easily than the rest of us... afterall, paying say 20% more in taxes when you make $50M/year is the difference between getting both a Porsche and a Ferrari or having to pick one, whereas 20% more taxes when you make $50k/year is the difference in making your mortgage payment or not.

And IMO, there are several other problems with McCain's plan:

1st, trickle-down doesn't work so well. It was trickle-down policies that got us into the whole housing meltdown (de-regulation of the industry was supposed to allow them to regulate themselves and choose their own risk, but we see how well that worked out). Plus, when you give a big cut to the top, they just pocket half of it for themselves, then trickle only 50% of the savings down to the next guy so takes his half then passes it along... so a $4B tax cut to ExxonMobile ends up doing what for the middle class, saving us $0.03/gal? Big whoop.

2nd if we're cutting taxes to the rich, how do we fund the insane costs of the gov't? Republicans used to be able to suggest tax cuts because they used to also operate on a platform of less and cheaper gov't, but that's not the case with today's Republicans that want to fund a $1 trillion war and a $1 trillion economy bailout (which the Republicans support even though it's far more socialist than Obama's tax plan, figure that one out). If we're cutting taxes to the rich to spur the economy, how do we fund the gov't properly? McCain's said little more than "we'll make it work because American is awesome!".

IMO, the Democrat plan is far more realistic, well thought out, and will have a better over-all effect on the economy. Cutting taxes to the middle class puts money directly in the hands of the people that need it the most when the economy sours. The bailout gets funded by the people that are directly benefiting from the bailout (rich bankers) who are the people that aren't going to be in the poor-house over having to pay more taxes.

It seems to me, we're in for hard times regardless of the plan used... it just seems fair that those that benefited the most at the top during the boom should be the people that step up the most to help the nation recover during the bust. The middle class are going to have a hard enough time with unemployment, inflation, etc... taxing the rich has less of a burden on less people.

That really cleared it up for me. Thanks for the posts guys.

Go ahead, milk your 15 minutes. Milk it baby!

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/15072.html

I hope he makes more than $250,000 off his fame, and Barak's plan taxes his ass. Then everyone forgets about him and he has to go back to making $25k/year plumbing.

I always like to read sperrys political opinions

He's not even a licensed plumber!!!

The problem is, from an article I cannot find right now on Barron's, that Obama's tax plan affects those making $111k per year and up with significant increases.. not just the rich. I don't consider $111k per year rich, especially when it's lumped into the same group with $250k+ income. I hope it's all flowers and roses like you say Scott, unfortunately, I have a feeling I'll be paying a significantly larger amount of tax in the near future.

According to Obama's calculator, I'm all good, it's just so difficult to decide what stories to believe.

Written in 2001: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784

I know, especially when everybody is saying everybody else is a liar.

Especially when everyone is right in saying that.

You will be ok big baller.

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...Picture3-8.png

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/29/news...lans/index.htm

Even that CNN article misrepresents the TPC data. Not that they are even "The Gospel". If you want to see their analysis, go to http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxto...candidates.cfm

You will see that the data even diverges based on whether you beleive what they published, or said in speeches or put in press releases, and when...

That is a whole other issue entirely. :(

Seriously, ignore everything that is promised during an election and simply look at the history of each party machine over the last 2 decades in Congress. Look at the trends of government agency and program expansion, and ask yourself where all that money will come from. Those costs will get passed on via direct and indirect channels to the group of people with the least amount of practical legislative and legal representation - i.e. you and me.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but...

http://tlrii.typepad.com/thelisciore.../07/07/gdp.gif

http://tlrii.typepad.com/thelisciore...employment.gif

http://tlrii.typepad.com/thelisciore...employment.gif

http://tlrii.typepad.com/thelisciore.../07/stocks.gif

http://tlrii.typepad.com/thelisciore...07/07/gini.gif

http://tlrii.typepad.com/thelisciore...ential-ec.html

The National debt one is the scariest... We had it all but licked at the end of the Clinton years and now it is higher than ever.... :(

National debt = tax on your children and a reason not to count on social security to fund your retirement.

Linking economic performance to presidencies is shaky, in a global marketplace the performance of the internal US economy should be dependent upon policies regulated by the Congress. Response times are also an issue.

It can also be argued heavily that the behaviors of various long-term economic stats respond much faster to international events (such as war) than to a single president's policies within his administration timeframe. Different actions and events carry with them various time-lags.

Calculation of such things as the national debt and GDP is very tricky these days......

I agree with Scotty on GDP, but national debt, not so much. National debt is a pretty real number based on pretty hard numbers right on the bottom of the federal government's balance sheet.

Headline News...
 

CNNBC: "Obama's Loss Traced To Scott Perry"

http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/index.html...456326-3VuhKax

That is some funny shit.

:)

(Yes, I'm quoting myself.) It's now a year later, and Obama is our 44th President. I'm happy to say that right now I really get the feeling that my hope from last year about Obama seems to be coming true... the pictures from the inauguration are really inspiring. A million people waving flags and celebrating is one hell of an endorsement.

Granted, it's only day 1, and the problems our nation faces today seem even harder than they did a year ago. The honeymoon may be *very* short with Obama. But I have to admit, it feels surprisingly good to know that Bush and his cronies can't screw up the world any more than they already have.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/...1/44612666.jpg

The DOW took a nice hit, thanks Obama!

But serirously, the fact that many people are happy about the concept of Obama being Presdient is certainly a success for us on the world stage.

Oh no, they still can and will. People in government mostly go to work for lobbying firms, think tanks and/or write books after their term of service is up, which play large roles in crafting government policy & influencing public opinion. So, they'll still be around. :|

Watching his first major news conference, one thing stands out. He speaks intelligently in complete sentences using actual English words and even occasionally answers the questions. Even if you disagree with his policies or politics, that should at least be refreshing.

I don't want us to end up like the 30s, or Japan and would rather not put future generations further in debt. I don't have the answers, but at least the financial people around him are a good cross section. Now if only we could get the congress, on both sides, to pull the sticks out of their asses and actually work for their constituents, we might get somewhere.

I would really like to see all the rating agency management and staff and risk management folks at the CDO involved firms brought up on criminal fraud charges.