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What the ?
Never Politically Correct! And Pointing Out Morons of Mass Destruction!
Still Undecided?
By Ed Furey
Tuesday, Nov 4 2008, 05:50 AM
For the last couple of months, I have tried to put into my posts both the reasons for voting for John McCain as well as those reasons not to vote for Obama. I’ve discussed their difference in tax plans, healthcare plans, and decisions about the war as well as John McCain’s positive experience factors. Patrick McIlheran is a paid writer that can express in words better than I can and more concisely the case for John McCain, and rather than force you to click to his site I have included his blog posting here. It also includes links to other columns he has written about specific topics.
What you should know by Tuesday morningBy Patrick McIlheran of the Journal Sentinel Nov. 3, 2008 11:31 a.m. | Still undecided? I can see how that happens. May I submit, then, the affirmative case for McCain?I’ve been making it in pieces in my print column in the Journal Sentinel for a few weeks now.Mind you, I don’t think John McCain is perfect -- far from it. He wasn’t my choice for president. But when it comes to November, one grades on a curve: I think he’d make a much better president than Barack Obama, and for many reasons.Among them are these:The two differ fundamentally on taxes. Obama says he’ll give tax cuts to 95% of all taxpayers -- but that includes the 40% who now pay no federal income tax. What he’s really proposing is to fully embrace federal taxation as a kind of a money pump to take money from those who earned it and redistribute it to those he thinks should have earned it.This is consistent with his past as a “community organizer,” stirring resentments for gain. McCain seems to have the main idea right: lower tax burdens when possible to encourage economic growth and without the aim of evening things up.This is still more important when you consider what liberals among congressional Democrats, convinced their day is dawning, are now toying with. Some chairmen of committees that govern retirement plans, for instance, are talking about acting on their enmity toward 401(k) plans. They’ve heard testimony about one think-tank plan to repeal such accounts’ tax advantage and, instead, pressure people into some government-run plan offering paltry but guaranteed returns.Obama’s not said a word, for or against, but when he talks about wanting to “spread the wealth around,” it suggests he’s got only a tenuous grasp on why it isn’t the wealth but is your wealth or my wealth or Joe the Plumber’s wealth. If he doesn’t grasp that distinction, and if his party controls the White House as well as Congress, would Obama be a check on the kinds of whack redistributionist schemes Congress hatches? Probably not.Not that McCain would mire Washington in gridlock. In fact, I think the signs are that he’s much better at being reasonable rather than dogmatic. Take a look, for instance, at how he broke with his own side in the war on terror to fault the Bush administration on interrogations. Note, also, that this man who was tortured by the regime now ruling Vietnam has for decades been one of the foremost advocates of improved diplomatic and trade relations with it because he believes that would be to our benefit, regardless of his feelings.By contrast, Obama, when given a chance to find some bridge over a yawning fissure in American politics, rejected it utterly. He opposed, when in the Illinois legislature, a measure to offer legal protection to infants who survive botched abortions. His explanations on this were evasive, and in the end, he rejected even a version offering all the protections for a right to abortion that the federal version of the law contained – a federal law that won unanimous support in the U.S. Senate, even from staunch defenders of abortion’s legality. He could not transcend partisanship when he had a chance.I think McCain is far better on health care: His plan, which spreads the current tax benefits for those with generous employers more equitably, does nothing at all to discourage employers who want to go on offering health coverage – and yet it makes room for letting markets start to work again in health insurance.Obama, on the other hand, talks of letting people keep their doctors, but the fact is that, by mandating expenses, his proposal would force more and more people into a government-sponsored plan by making private insurance too costly. Obama’s plan enshrines the principle that everyone’s care must be paid for by someone else, exactly the mechanism that has made health care too costly, while McCain’s makes room for innovations that might bring prices under control.On war, Obama touts his consequence-free decision before he attained national office to oppose the toppling of Saddam Hussein. In this, he differs not just from McCain but from many leading liberals in his own party.But he’s touting the wrong decision: Obama was wrong and McCain right on the really important call, whether to give up when in 2006 America look beaten by al-Qaida in Iraq and various others seeking to undo our liberation of that country. Obama called the surge wrong and said it wouldn’t work. McCain called it necessary and said it would. Now, of course, it turns out it has worked, something even Obama reluctantly concedes. And while the decision to go to war was one on which thoughtful minds at that time could disagree, the question on the surge was simpler: Does America end wars by accepting a loss?The correct answer is no. Accepting a loss leads to more Americans getting killed in the long run. On the surge, McCain showed he knew the correct answer: You end the war by winning it.But, say critics, America isn’t really at war, for it’s asked for no sacrifice from most people. Obama would do that, surely?Not by what the candidate is saying. Again, take a look at the tax pitch. Obama keeps hammering on how he’s going to give a tax “cut” to practically everyone, to be paid for by the Monopoly Man.Only this is nonsense. His promises far outrun the underlying numbers. McCain’s don’t tote up, either, but McCain, at least, can name federal programs he’d slow or eliminate to cope with hard times. He has decades of being a cheapskate with federal spending, something Obama shows no sign of. When it comes to shared sacrifice, Obama is saying it will be someone else, not you, who do any of it. McCain has a much more realistic take on the straits our country is in.That’s because he’s the grown-up in the race. His experience in federal office far exceeds Obama’s experience in pretty much everything put together, and this has produced far better judgment.McCain’s critics are reduced to saying that Sarah Palin is plainly unacceptable – though, of course, even she has a more credible resume when it comes to executive experience than Obama does – or that McCain was “erratic” during the mortgage meltdown. Certainly, McCain said some goofy things about firing Chris Cox, but in the end, he and Obama ended up in much the same place, backing the bailout, only Obama spent a week utterly frozen up. The difference was that he looks graceful frozen up, as he looks graceful in most things.Looking graceful is nice, and some people backing Obama seem to be hoping that that will carry him until he grows into the role. I say otherwise: Experience is better, and with McCain, it means you get growing is accomplished.The best speech McCain delivered was at his nomination, and its heart was his story of war imprisonment. What started sounding like a boast turned out to be its opposite. McCain told of how his captors broke him. This shamed him, he said, but also took away his youthful self-regard. He learned, he said, "the limits of my selfish independence," to understand that "I wasn't my own man anymore; I was my country's." Those are the words of a man who has had time to think and comprehend the meaning of freedom, something Obama may someday achieve – but something he plainly hasn’t yet had the time to do.Note, please, that I have only sketched reasons very quickly here: I do hope that, if you’re undecided, you follow those links to where I make the arguments more fully.
Or you can read what the Wall Street Journal says this morning: That in the end, Obama’s appeals of hope and change amount to mere gauze, a gamble unsupported by much of anything. So, as you head to the polls today, please give yourself enough time in case your polling place is crowded. Be patient, because what you are doing is important. Our country needs John McCain, and John McCain needs the support of those that have taken their time or have had a difficult time deciding on a candidate.
Thank you for your consideration!
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