ShareThisSometimes it's as if we never got out of high school. We insist on choosing our presidents as if it is a popularity contest.We did it in 2000, when George W. Bush seemed friendlier than Al Gore, an opinion the Supreme Court decided to settle for us. We did it again in 2004, when John Kerry seemed a tad too haughty and couldn't seem to relate. We did in 1992 when Bill Clinton was the hot new stud in class and George H.W. Bush seemed so yesterday. We did it in 1980 when Jimmy Carter came off as geeky while Ronald Reagan exuded star power. Now we're wondering if new guy Barack Obama might be too remote. Is the John McCain saga overshadowed by the Sarah Palin show? And whatever happened to Amtrak-riding, balding, foreign-policy-spouting Joe Biden, who was the fifth-youngest senator in history and is one of the Senate's least wealthy members? Is this election going to become a referendum on a gun-toting, barb-quipping, creationism-espousing, moose-dressing governor of Alaska? The economy is tanking. Giant corporations are falling like leaves. The jobless rate is climbing. Homes aren't selling or are in foreclosure. Pensions are a myth. People are choosing between a gallon of milk and a gallon of gas. We're secretly sending forces to Pakistan, which is no dinky little country of 25 million but which has 165 million people (and nukes). We refuse to talk to Iran (which is trying like heck to get nukes). Russia says it doesn't have to pay attention to us anymore. Our roads, bridges and water pipes are falling apart. We can't clean up the debris from one hurricane before another storm strikes.Meantime, we're lurching around like chickens with our heads cut off parsing Obama's comment that McCain's promise he'll be a change agent is like putting lipstick on a pig. Could it possibly mean Obama was dissing Palin, who wears lipstick (but seems to be able to take care of herself)?McCain, in turn, falsely attacks Obama as wanting to give kindergartners a primer in sex ed. (Presidents don't even set educational curricula; states do.) We have to get real, folks.This election is going to be another squeaker. Once again, as in 2004, Ohio may decide the winner. Or it might be New Hampshire. It's all about the electoral votes and which man gets to 272. There are believable scenarios whereby either Obama or McCain could win. But it won't be a landslide either way.So let's not let this election degenerate into another phony culture-wars contest. The next president is not going to be able to decide whether the teaching of evolution is banned in classrooms or whether abortion will no longer be an option or whether children pray in schools or whether knowing the Pledge of Allegiance becomes a lost skill or whether the death penalty disappears.Let's not get distracted by Michelle Obama's fist bumps or Cindy McCain's $300,000 convention wardrobe. Let's not dwell on whose children are cuter or more free-spirited. Let's refuse to let either campaign drag us into the mud of half-truths, lies, innuendo, character assassination and spin. Why don't we get out of high-school mode and demand that Obama and McCain give us serious answers to our questions about economic policy and how they would each pay for their promises? (No more claptrap about getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse without spelling out what they mean.) Let's pin Obama down on what withdrawal from Iraq would mean to the Middle East and force McCain to say how we can continue spending $10 billion a month there.Let's examine the vision that each man has for the future of the country -- they are very different -- and whether each is being realistic. And let's all watch those debates, starting Sept. 26, and make up our own minds. Let's go for competence, not just likeability.(Scripps Howard columnist Ann McFeatters has covered the White House and national politics since 1986. E-mail amcfeatters(at)nationalpress.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
For once, let's get serious about election
Submitted by SHNS on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 17:31
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
It is Obama who is trying to distract from his agenda
Well, it is hardly a "distraction" for voters who care about innocent human life to consider that Barack Obama's policy committments, if implemented, would certainly substantially increase the number of abortions performed in the U.S. Obama, and many of his defenders, would like to distract the public's attention away from noticing the extremism of his pro-abortion agenda -- an enterprise with which the mainstream media often are cooperative by merely reporting that Obama "supports abortion rights" without giving any specifics.
Here are some specifics:
Obama is a cosponsor of the "Freedom of Choice Act," a bill that would make partial-birth abortion legal again, require tax-funded abortion on demand, and invalidate virtually all state and federal limits on abortion, including parental notification laws. In 2007, Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing I'd do."
In the Illinois state Senate in 2001-2003, Obama even opposed and ultimately killed legislation to provide protection for babies who are born alive during abortions -- and he has been making demonstrably false claims about the bill ever since, which have been throughly rebutted in an extensively documented White Paper released by National Right to Life on August 28, 2008, which can be read or downloaded here: http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html
The bill that Obama killed was virtually identical to a bill that passed Congress without a single dissenting vote in 2002. When we released recently uncovered documents to prove that this was so, Obama himself said that we were "lying." After an investigation, Annenberg's independent FactCheck.org concluded: "Obama's claim is wrong . . . The documents from NRLC support the group's claims that Obama is misrepresenting the contents of SB 1082 [the 2003 Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act]."
Do we want to trust the protection of human rights to a man who said that deciding when "a baby gets human rights" is "above my pay grade"?
Obama's recent talk about "abortion reduction" is merely political pixie dust. Consider: one policy that both sides agree actually has substantially reduced the number of abortions performed in the United States was the cutoff of Medicaid funding for abortion on demand. There are various empirical studies that demonstrate that many children have been born, who would otherwise have been aborted, because Medicaid funding of abortion has been denied by the federal Hyde Amendment, and by the comparable policies in effect in the majority of states. By the most conservative estimate, the federal Hyde Amendment alone has saved over one million lives since it was first enacted in 1976. Both sides agree that this has occurred -- indeed, the pro-abortion side cites these studies in urging Congress and state legislatures to repeal these pro-life policies, while pro-life groups see this as a success story. So then, here is a proven "abortion reduction" policy, so is Obama for it? No, he is not -- he advocates repeal of the Hyde Amendment. Moreover, in 2007 Obama gave a speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in which he promised abortion would be covered in his national health care plan, which means that everybody would be required to pay for elective abortion through taxes, mandatory premiums, or both. In addition, the "Freedom of Choice Act" provides that "A government may not . . . discriminate against" abortion "in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information," which is hardly a law that will foster "abortion reduction."
Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee
Washington, D.C.
http://www.nrlc.org
Legfederal // at // aol - dot - com
Mr. Johnson, While I respect
Mr. Johnson,
While I respect your right to feel the way that you do about abortion and the right to life, I wonder do you take your beliefs to their logical conclusion. It seems to me that the belief that you want a culture of life is an admirable value. So how do you feel about lives once they are born? Do you believe that the child that you fought so hard to make sure comes into the world can stay alive with health insurance? How do you feel about the young man who was given up by parents who chose not to abort but now is forced to move from foster home to group home and back again? Are you in the least bit concerned about the young adults who honorably give their lives to defend this country being sent to their deaths in wars for control of oil resources? Do you care that the vast majority of welfare recipients are children? Do you care that social security benefits may be gambled away in a falling stock market, allowing one of the most vulnerable segments of society, our grandparents, to have to choose between prescriptions and food? These too are issues in a culture of life. These things cannot be reduced to simply the unborn. To do so is to trivialize the life that you are attempting to protect. To you, Senator Obama is anathama because of his pro-choice stand. You are entitled to your opinion. But where do you lend your voice against a war-hawk like John McCain? Why don't you decry his choice to tax the healthcare premiums? Why aren't you concerned about education reform which has been shown to be one of the best ways to lift youth from a life of poverty and crime? These are as much issues of a culture of life as abortion.
I write as a concerned independent who is studying for the ministry. Your simplistic, one-issue appeal for a right-to-life doctrine doesn't hold its own weight, but then again, this is simply my opinion.