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Richie Allen wrote:Five interesting NY Times articles I can't find much fault with.

David Brooks: The Social Animal

Bob Herbert: She's Not Ready

Paul Krugman: Blizzard of Lies (I know, it's Krugman but it still rings true)

McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions

Gov. Palin’s Worldview

*Edit: I just noticed that you might have to be signed in to the NYT site to see the articles but I'll go ahead and leave these up anyway.

Michael wrote:Right now it looks like McCain is going to win. Unbelievable.

PujolJunkie wrote:So now that the debate comes back onto issues, you run away. You're okay with arguing with people and getting personal as long as it doesn't have to do with issues. But when it comes to people criticizing your beliefs, you throw a fit and call it a waste of time. I was framing the mindset of people who are opposed to Obama's views and now you're all butt hurt. God forbid should someone criticize your beliefs, but you can call liberalism all the names in the world.

I challenged your stances. I'm so sorry, once again, for trying to actually debate with you. You can dish it out, but the moment anybody challenges you, you start crying about it. I didn't insult you. I attacked you on the issues. Guess that's not okay. This [expletive] liberal thread is so silly. And a waste of time.

clement wrote:Just taking from BW's list, are these really the issues that Christians care most about. Sanctioned killing of human life, allowing people unfettered ownership of the means to kill, opposition to government lending helping hands to people in need, you're against government involvement in funding education and healthcare. I mean what exactly does compassionate conservatism mean?

The McCain Tax Increases--Continued

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Director of the Congressional Budget Office and current chief McCain economic advisor, is an honest man--which means he's something of a liability on the Straight Talk Express. A few months ago, he admitted to my colleague, Michael Scherer, that Barack Obama's economic plan would reduce taxes for most people. And now, in a forthcoming book by Fortune columnist Matt Miller, he makes it clear that the next President is going to have to raise taxes.

"If you do nothing on the spending side, you're going to have to raise taxes whether you're a Republican, a Democrat or a Martian," he tells Miller...and then he immediately makes it clear that the "spending side" part of the argument is nothing more than a political fig-leaf.

"It's arithmetic." Federal revenue today is 18.8 percent of GDP and federal spending is 20 percent. Holtz-Eakin observes that "the pressure are there" to lift spending [on entitlement programs, mostly] and taxes to 23 or 24 percent of GDP by around 2020, and to as much as 27 percent if health costs remain out of control. Miller does the arithmetic: that's an annual tax hike of $550 to $700 billion, well beyond the range of any spending cuts that McCain has or might propose. (Those vaunted earmarks cost about $20 billion per year.)

It should be noted that Obama's proposed middle class tax cuts are nearly as foolish--and unlikely, in the long term--as McCain's, although Obama claims to pay for them by closing corporate loopholes and raising the top marginal tax rates to Clinton-era levels.

But it's John McCain who has opposed any and all tax increases, sort of--as I reported yesterday, McCain would tax employer-provided health care benefits. (He would also raise energy costs significantly with his cap-and-trade carbon emissions reduction program.)

Miller concludes:

So why does tax-cutting mania persist among Republicans, I asked Holtz-Eakin, the McCain adviser--given...that, as Holtz-Eakin himself explain to me, taxes soon have to go up substantially in any event?
"It's the brand," he said, "and you don't dilute the brand."
Miller's book, The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, will be published by Holt in January 2009. I'm about halfway through reading an advance copy and, as is always the case with Miller, this is a smart, sane and extremely well-written account of our current economic mess.

Update: What Holtz-Eakin admitted to Scherer was that the Obama's plan represented a net tax reduction over ten years.

BW23 wrote:

clement wrote:Just taking from BW's list, are these really the issues that Christians care most about. Sanctioned killing of human life, allowing people unfettered ownership of the means to kill, opposition to government lending helping hands to people in need, you're against government involvement in funding education and healthcare. I mean what exactly does compassionate conservatism mean?

I support people being responsible for their actions. Liberals don't.

jim wrote:

BW23 wrote:

clement wrote:Just taking from BW's list, are these really the issues that Christians care most about. Sanctioned killing of human life, allowing people unfettered ownership of the means to kill, opposition to government lending helping hands to people in need, you're against government involvement in funding education and healthcare. I mean what exactly does compassionate conservatism mean?

I support people being responsible for their actions. Liberals don't.

Who are these evil liberals?

jim wrote:

BW23 wrote:

clement wrote:Just taking from BW's list, are these really the issues that Christians care most about. Sanctioned killing of human life, allowing people unfettered ownership of the means to kill, opposition to government lending helping hands to people in need, you're against government involvement in funding education and healthcare. I mean what exactly does compassionate conservatism mean?

I support people being responsible for their actions. Liberals don't.

Who are these evil liberals?