After the speech last night, though, it was almost embarrassing that he kept using the word “Change”. There isn’t anything about his campaign as it exists (regardless of how you feel about McCain the man) *now* that suggests forward-looking thinking.

As for the Obama/Bush link, while I have certainly strongly disliked some of Bush’s policies, my biggest problem with him has been his incompetence. I think a lot of that incompetence is/was driven by inexperience and a prediliction to only look at one side of an issue — the side his rabid supporters wanted him to see. Now, my gut feeling on Obama is that he would be a lot less rash and a lot more pragmatic than Bush. But I prefer to vote based on evidence, not on my gut feelings.

However, the Bush comparison that’s not ever talked about is the one phin touches on. I’m talking about the Bush/Obama comparison. I guess it takes an indenpenent who has no real love for either party to realize that things didn’t turn out so well for the country the last time we elected a man we knew too little about, had too little experience, had a fanatical, unyielding base, talked a lot about “uniting” and was given a rubber-stamp Congress.

Voting for Obama takes a leap of faith for an independent. You have to trust that he will reach across the aisle despite having no real record of doing so in the U.S. Senate. OR you can just suck it up and decide that a Democratic-led government is preferable to having any Republican anywhere near the White House. If I vote Obama, it’ll probably be that “suck it up” reason. But McCain hasn’t, in my mind, disqualified himself yet.

If compassionate conservatism means employing people, it is failing. Please see the new unemployment figures, 6.1% and the part of the employment situation summary where it says 2.2 million people in the past year have moved onto unemployment. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm Also, take a look at real wages, where after initially dropping as Bush entered office have remained stagnant for the rest of his 8 years, a stark contrast you will notice to EVERY president since Nixon. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/stagnation-nation/

Granted, this slowdown isn’t completely Bush’s fault, but if his supposed policies are a recipe for economic growth they are evidently failing.

With regards to the CATO piece, McCain said he would not rule out raising taxes to bring solvency to social security. I also like the last line saying we will experience “European-style stagnation”, please see some earlier graphs and charts to see that it won’t take Obama’s tax plan to bring that about. I am also pretty skeptical about WSJ and other newspaper economic analysis, the WSJ editorial section is the same one that brought us supply-side economics…long held by any serious economist as bunk.

Under Clinton, you also had divided government for 6 out of his 8 years. In other words, the worst excesses of both parties were tempered by the relative power of the opposition. Bush lacked that check for much of his term and we saw that result. Nothing and I mean NOTHING that I have read or checked re: Obama’s actual record will lead me to believe that AFTER he becomes POTUS, that he will be this “post-partisanship” candidate. That is a humongous leap of faith with a man of his hubris (relative to his accomplishments of course), with a huge advantage in the House and a possible filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Oh yeah, and his base absolutely adores him (which is always a relief to those who find themselves around the political middle) and the media is planted firmly up his ass. If that isn’t a recipe for disaster, I don’t know what is. After all, it’s not like there is anything in the recent past to learn from…n’ah.

God that sounds like something my wife would say…let me finish the sentence.

“And that’s not the issue, this isn’t about Obama, this about you and your complete lack of sensitivity towards ___________.”

And then I reminder her of what a vote for Obama would mean to her personally as she gazes over her vanity stuffed with organic make-up, baby-sea lion hair products and designer jewelry. And the room goes totally f-ing silent.

Compassionate conservativism means employing people and providing goods & services that people need. It also means giving to charity, which conservatives statistically do much more than liberals do.

Can anyone explain to me what “Change we can believe in” means? What am I suppose to “believe in”? Is this a referrence to belief in Obama or the “Change”? When you can’t even decipher the freak’in slogan, that should tell you something.

Here is something you can ABSOLUTELY believe in: A economic-behavioral response to Mr. Tax Obama. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/03/12/obamas-reckless-tax-increase-to-save-social-security/

“…but McCain can’t bring change if he’s parroting Bush,” – avin

Which he decidedly is not.

I know this is confusing for you Avinash, but Bush is not running for re-election.

he fires the sta that once worked fr the Bush campaign

closed down all 527 groups immediately

willing to open an investigation into the Bush administration’s information on Iraq

ONLY THEN would I ever think he’s a real reformist. His speech wasn’t exactly ‘more of the same’ but it was the same text-book ‘let me look like a reformist’ table of issues that sit very empty on the table.

“You can’t judge a man on what he did years ago, you judge him on what he does now…

I am glad you and I have finally found some common ground on which we can agree. Barack Obama, as defined by his current voting record, is a partisan hack.