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I am dismayed that "Intelligence" has come to be something that is looked down upon in this country. From the children who are smart but "play dumb" so that they can be popular, to the adults who openly sneer at those more intelligent or better educated than themselves as "elitist".. this country has a problem.
In every way, a certain base of this country is trying to turn the hands of the clock back to 1960 - and they seem to fear that education is the enemy. That with education people will realize the problems and come up with better solutions. That with intelligence people will react cooly and rationally to solve issues, instead of counting on knee-jerk emotional appeals.
I am continually saddened that as the rest of the world races to educate their populace, seize market opportunities, and create lasting prosperity for their populations .... the U.S. fights the smallest of battles, worrying about things like whether or not "under God" should be in the pledge of allegiance.
I would like a president smarter than myself. Smarter than my neighbors, smarter than most people I know. I'd also like them to be realistic and practical enough to accomplish real things - not just theoretical excursions.
Sen. McCain may be a fairly intelligent man, he certainly has a lot of experience on the world stage (he has ZERO presidential experience, however) -- but that is not the platform he's running on. He's running on the "I'm a more average guy than the other guy!!" And that's disturbing.
I'll be voting blue tomorrow. I'd prefer brilliance of any kind to another term of the current idealogues. No - I have no idea how either of these men will do as presidents, but I'd prefer to take my risk on the more imaginative, creative, intelligent of the two.
Are you sure about that? I can think of a few that are a little more far fetched...
- We completed our mission in Afghanistan.
- The war in Iraq would be an easy win.
- Overall the rich that create our jobs have moral standards that shape the way they do business.
Should we go on?
You have to look at context. For example, Afghanistan bad guys were pretty much decimated. We didn't take all our troops out, did we? And once we saw al Qaeda regrouping, we started sending more troops.
The war (translation: major operations) was easy, which was what Bush was referring to on the deck of a carrier. His words were twisted by the left to mean that the war was finished.
You'll have to define "moral standards." I'm not familiar with that quote.
Everytime they made remarks on the campaign trail that decried the elite and where they said they were fighting for the average joe. They mocked Obama as an elitist because elitism is politically more damning than intellectualism. Both are bad, elitism just suggest economic as well as intellectual snobbery. To say they were fighting for the average joe is to suggest that Obama was only fighting for exceptional joe. Both candidates are fighting for the average joe, the middle-class people in our society who have been experiencing tremendous pressure during the last seven years. They have different philosophies, but both Obama and McCain want the middle class to prosper. Many voters are voting because of those different philosophies, where one candidate advocates continuing the prevailing philosophy of trickle-down, and the other candidate says that's not working, let's try giving tax breaks to the middle class instead of to the upper class. What's ironic, is the guy giving tax breaks directly to the middle class is the guy being portrayed as elitist, and the guy giving tax breaks to the upper class is the one palling around with Joe the Plumber.
What is wrong with the idea of taxing corporations and investors is that those taxes are considered to be expenses (though maybe not in their accounting) which are passed on to the customer: The average Joe, as well as low-income people. Biden and Obama both share the viewpoint that a certain amount of income is too much and should be "spread around." How is that going to help the little guy if he is paying for taxes on Big Oil? This may sound good to people who aren't aware of what's really going on and may win votes, but it is not fair.
The idea of people paying taxes on investments is not wise, either. It's just another way of taking money from people. If the Congress wants to be open and honest about it, then they would put it all in one tax and show how everything is accounted for, and not having any hidden taxes.
Most people don't realize how much they lose from their paycheck because of social security, medicare, and withholding. They don't realize that if they allow withholding from their paychecks, they are giving money away. I personally would prefer a progressive national sales tax which makes all other taxes disappear.
[As an aside, this doesn't count in the argument, but people who take their check to a check cashing service are taking huge chuncks of money out of their income].
Hmmmm that's interesting, the stock market crashed and the onset of the depression started in 1929, yet FDR didn't become president until 1933
The root cause of the depression was the accumulation of wealth into the hands of very few.
Good point about FDR. Looks like he was governor of NY at the time.
But it looks to me like there were several reasons for the Great Depression. And there seems to still be discussion on about it.
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