Hillary's Experience Verified

In the spirit of truth and correctness I answered a The John Blog post about Hillary's minor re-interpretation of her trip to Bosnia, and thought I would turn the answer into a post. I checked out the "truth" and here is what I have come up with!!

You guys are so mean to Hillary. The poor woman has PTSD after fighting the vast right wing conspiracy for years, fighting the legion of left wing bloggers who hate her,turning the Asteroid back from destroying the earth, putting Lex Luther in Megaprison, helping Al Gore invent the internet, fighting along side John Kerry as he fought the terrorist American troops in Vietnam as they were raping and pillaging throughout the country,rescuing the hostages in Iran, helping John McCain escape from the Chivatre Hotel in Paris, huddling with Obama in the churches Quiet Room~so he couldn't "hear" Reverend Wright's inflammatory speeches for 20 years, and assisting Rambo in beating back the evil thugs in the latest film, Oh and catching a catfish that set a Guiness Record:)
How's that for Experience!!
Obama's only foreign experience was going to IHOP on two very dangerous trips where he had to corkscrew into the parking lot and dodge several famished Weight Watcher escapees who were trying to cut him off at the counter; and one in which he got into a Volvo by mistake!!

The above "facts" have been verifed, and re-verified for authenticity!!

No Really It's All True!!

I am hardly being serious, and I approved this message! Hey Please Cut her some slack~she is a politician~~politicians embellish to make themselves look better. Remember when Ronald Reagan stormed Normandy and took Point de Hoc by himself, headed across Europe and killed Hitler single handedly?? Neither do I!! :)

Daniel ;)

Campaign Vows Face Reality Check

As shown in this next story by Andrew Taylor of the Associated Press, by way of Yahoo News, there are a lot of promises being made to spend "OUR" money, by the Presidential Candidates!!

Costly campaign vows face reality check


Barack Obama promises $4,000 credits to help pay college tuition. Hillary Rodham Clinton backs $25 billion for home heating subsidies. And John McCain wants to not only extend President Bush's tax cuts, but eliminate the alternative minimum tax at a cost of about $2 trillion over 10 years.

Then there's reality.
These campaign pledges — and dozens more in the manifestos of the leading presidential candidates — face a collision with the real world come January.

That's when the new president will start putting together a real budget and economic plan, one drafted against the backdrop of record federal deficits exceeding $400 billion. Even more challenging is the growth of the Medicare and Social Security retirement programs, which budget experts say could require wrenching benefit cuts, politically difficult tax hikes or both to handle the retirement of the baby boom generation.

In that environment, promises to effectively rebate the first $500 of Social Security payroll taxes (Obama), provide $1,000 tax credits for retirement savings (Clinton) or cut the corporate income tax by 10 percentage points (McCain) may turn out to be campaign fantasies.

"They're operating in Never Never Land.... None of them are honestly addressing the real challenges that they're going to be facing if they're elected," said Leon Panetta, former budget director and chief of staff for President Clinton. "We're facing a deficit bubble that is getting increasingly worse and at some point is going to explode on us."

Democrats Obama and Clinton face a situation eerily familiar to 1992, when Bill Clinton ran a campaign promising middle-class tax cuts and universal health care. Instead, worsening deficit predictions led him to push through Congress a tax-heavy deficit reduction plan that helped Republicans take over Congress in 1994.

For Republican McCain, the parallel is to the one-term presidency of George H.W. Bush, who inherited a budget crisis — and a Congress controlled by Democrats — that ultimately led him to break his "read my lips" pledge not to raise taxes.

For now, however, the campaigns are sticking with policy papers that don't add up but cater to political constituencies. Obama's "Keeping America's Promise" manifesto is full of costly prescriptions for the economy. Obama proposes tax cuts for senior citizens and college students, and $500 for every wage-earner, totaling $80 billion-$85 billion a year. He says he would pay for the tax cuts by closing loopholes and closing offshore tax havens, but those steps would fall far short of fully offsetting their costs. Both Obama and Clinton would keep in place many of the Bush tax cuts, including rate cuts for most taxpayers and the $1,000 per child tax credit. Both would let rate cuts for upper-income taxpayers expire, and use the savings to help pay for their health care promises.

To address looming shortfalls in Social Security, Obama supports raising the cap that limits the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax to the first $102,000 of income. Almost in an aside, the Obama campaign document says he supports closing the "doughnut hole" in the Medicare drug benefit — the gap created at the point when beneficiaries have to pick up all of their drug costs before catastrophic drug coverage kicks it. Closing it would roughly double the cost of the Medicare prescription drug program, however, and Obama offers no way to pay for it. Obama also promises a $60 billion investment in infrastructure and an $18 billion per year boost in education spending. The Illinois senator says his plan to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq will generate savings to help pay for these items, but that doesn't qualify as an offset under budget rules because the Iraq spending is an emergency expense, not a permanent part of the budget.

For his part, McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts as tilted too much in favor of the wealthy. He has since changed his mind. Now, with most budget experts forecasting deep deficits for the future, McCain wants to extend the Bush tax cuts, which expire at the end of 2010. The price tag for McCain's plan would soon exceed $300 billion a year after government borrowing costs are factored in. McCain also wants to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, which would add more than $2 trillion in accumulated deficits to the federal ledger from 2010-2020. The AMT was enacted in 1969 to make sure the wealthy paid at least some tax, but now also threatens about 20 million additional taxpayers with levies averaging $2,000 if annual fixes aren't renewed.


Clinton's campaign generally succeeds more than the others at providing offsets — revenue increases or spending cuts — to finance programs such as her plan to provide health care for all. But even if the next president "pays for" new initiatives, they will still be left with an underlying budget deficit exceeding $400 billion and the looming crises in Social Security, Medicare and the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled. Even so, Clinton campaign literature promises a "return to fiscal responsibility. After six and a half years of Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, Hillary wants America to regain control of its destiny. She will move back toward a balanced budget and surpluses."

Just how Clinton — or any of her rivals — might miraculously produce a budget surplus is not answered. "They face a collision with reality," said Bob Greenstein, who heads the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. "None of the three candidates is coming to grips with budget realities."

Urban Institute President Robert Reischauer, who directed the Congressional Budget Office during landmark budget debates of 1990 and 1993, says there's only so much any incoming president can hope to accomplish. Already, Reischauer says, the agenda includes bruising battles over renewing the Bush tax cuts, as well as reforming the AMT and preventing Medicare payments to doctors from being cut . "There's a certain amount of political capital and energy that new administrations have and because the plate is already full, it's going to be very hard for them to push forward on new initiatives," Reischauer said.

Please Keep Your Hands Out Of "OUR" Pockets!!

Will Bill Behave?

In a story this afternoon, Former President Clinton says he's learned a lesson from the dustup over his remarks on the campaign trail, he can promote his wife's presidential candidacy, but he's not free to defend her.


Bill Clinton also said that everything he said in South Carolina about Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was "factually accurate," but a lot that has been said about what he said is "factually inaccurate."

I think it shall be interesting to watch how the rest of this race unfolds, as it seems hard to believe that Bill could "restrain" his "anger", if the right buttons are pushed, and indeed it would be out of character, not to defend his wife. He is an Ex-President, but surely he would never let himself be made to look anything but his wife's defender in many circumstances, i.e. if an issue came such Michael Dukakis' answer to what he would do if his wife was raped and murdered!! For those too young to remember the exchange it occurred this way:
The issue of capital punishment came up in the October 13, 1988 debate between the two presidential nominees. Bernard Shaw, the moderator of the debate, asked Dukakis, "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis [his wife] were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" Dukakis replied coolly, "No, I don't, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life," and explained his stance. During debate preparations, Dukakis's campaign manager Susan Estrich had prepared an answer highlighting the candidate's empathy for victims of crime, noting the beating of his father in a robbery and the death of his brother in a hit-and-run car accident. Many observers felt Dukakis' answer lacked the passion one would expect of a person discussing a loved one's rape and death. Many, including the candidate himself, believe that this, in part, cost Dukakis the election, as his poll numbers dropped from 49% to 42% nationally that night. Sorry, kind of a long aside to make the point that I cannot see Bill letting "everything" go by him without a defensive response! Beings it is not Bill running, it is more of a "question" that "could" set him off, not exactly this same scenario, and mostly because I wanted to write about this question for a long time and couldn't find anywhere to put it in. I had been a Dukakis supporter until this question, and then no more, and I wanted to bring it up sometime during this race!! :)

So I think if issues such as this come up, I think we will see the "angry" Bill, instead of the moderate, and controlled one who made his statements today!! Maybe? I guess only time and the pressure of the campaign will tell which Bill is still out there!! And in the off chance there is a similar issue/question, no matter his status, Anger would be appropriate, and should be displayed!!


bill