On Filipino’s support for McCain: “This goes deeper than ignorance.”

“Seventy (70) countries, two billion world citizens prefer Obama 4 to 1. Except Georgia and….the Philippines! It seems the majority Republican sentiments in this group are reflective of our origins. So what do we have in common with Georgia aside from being a small, poor and war torn country? Could it be the Catholic Conscience voter…?

This was announced on CNN last night. I have never in my entire life felt so ASHAMED to be a Filipino. For this goes deeper than ignorance which can be cured. A nation of bigoted fools is hopeless… ‘—A FilAm Liberal Democrat (FLD)

I got the above blistering statements in my email from an egroup on Oct 22, 2008. I missed seeing that CNN show, but if true, FLD sounded exactly like first-lady wannabee Michelle Obama when she expressed scorn for her country early on in the campaign, only to be blunted by restraint to talk more about it.

Overtly secular, FLD can be accused of condescension for denouncing the “ignorance” of Filipinos who come from a “bigoted nation of fools.” Antipathy and intolerance roil against those who don’t share the media-backed liberal view of the democrats. I know FLD as a learned doctor who prescribes cure for Filipinos. Although her view is part of freedom’s guaranteed perks, it made me ponder why, to my surprise, many kababayans would prefer McCain over Obama. Sharing with you my humble opinion on this issue before the US Presidential Election day in an article to follow…to be continued…Abangan! (Photo Credit: byatis547)=0=

UPDATE: The continuation can be found on my blog dated October 30, 2008 entitled “Win or lose, after the election we go shopping.” AFM

Republican Party on Journey to Oblivion?

When George W. Bush narrowly pulled off two Presidential elections, concerns were raised of Democrats going the way of the Whigs. Things have dramatically changed and this dire prospect is now talked about the Republicans rather than the Democrats. After the election the GOP is expected to be in shambles.

Collin Powell might have already hammered the first nail. As he endorsed Barack Obama for President, Powell complained that his party has moved too much to the right and criticized McCain for employing negative attacks as campaign tactics. Apparently, Powell is now concerned about his legacy. All indications point to McCain trying to win nasty rather than lose badly. And Powell will have none of it.

At the same time, Powell complained that the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate and crown princess of the party, Sarah Palin, is totally unprepared for the Presidency, which to Powell is actually the job of the Vice President. After initially energizing the party’s base, Palin has slowly turned out to be a polarizing figure to the Americans and even to her own party. Even conservative opinion makers started to attack her after sub-par performances in unscripted interviews. Kathleen Parker called Palin “out of her league” and even proposed that she drop out of the race. David Brooks called Palin “fatal cancer to Republican party.” Both Parker and Brooks cast doubts on McCain’s judgment over his choice of Palin as Vice-Presidential candidate. McCain answers only with “amazed” response. An Associated Press investigation released today finds out that Alaska pays for the travels of Palin’s children, and Palin revised filed expense records to make these expenses official when reporters started to get nosey. Worse still, Palin charged some hotel expenses when in fact she was staying at her home. In a separate interview with CNN today, Palin continue to insist that she is even more experienced than Obama, prompting a chuckling Larry King to ask one Republican panelist, “Are you now seeing the end of the race?”

Even as he considers himself a Republican, Powell, like Clinton and Obama and other Democrat leaders, talks seriously about the need of America to regain the respect and admiration of the world. Neither McCain nor Palin tackles this theme. Instead, both talk of being non-apologetic for their actions in dealing with allies.

At least 40% of American voters still adore the McCain-Palin ticket and are thrilled at whatever the duo brings to the White House. But as issues are discussed daily at the backdrop of terrible wounding of capitalism as an economic ideology, the GOP is proving to be on the wrong side of history. The Republican candidates are trailing so badly in the congressional races that they now only talk of salvaging a few seats in both house and senate, so that at least their right to filibuster will be safeguarded.

The Republican party is obviously feeling the weight of the generally unsympathetic mainstream media. This morning, McCain was talking mad at the NBC crew because the network did not carry the recent Biden story. McCain has prohibited many reporters of the mainstream media from traveling with him in his campaign plane. From now on he will probably surround himself only with sympathetic Fox News (derided in the Web as FauxNews or Fox-machine), New York Post, Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal—all part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. You bet, GOP will likely also use MySpace as the official social network. Partisans will also exclusively patronize 20th Century Fox productions and boycott Michael Moore’s movies. Very soon you may find National Geographic defending Palin’s view on global warming so they can promote drill-drill-drill.

The blogoshere certainly would not be left behind in pushing the GOP to oblivion. Millions of blogs on US elections 2008 do not show admiration for McCain, Palin nor the Republicans. The last time the a Republican president get elected was in YouTube-free 2004. That was the time when blogs were few and bloggers were still too shy to weight in on anything that matters. Playing hard ball to win an election was the rule and candidates with few resources can only swear in silence or simply watch helplessly. FoxNews anchors would praise the wealthy Republicans to high heavens. One male anchor, I remember, had the bravery to announce that “Republicans get laid more often because they are fabulously rich.”

That was an era the Republicans could now only recall with misty eyes. Now their attempts at gimmicks, stunts and propaganda over the Web get flagged down before they stick. Blogging is passion and bloggers are generally extremely unforgiving when lied to. The Web is a domain unfriendly to GOP.

Headed by a self-proclaimed computer illiterate, the GOP was quite late in jumping into the Web this election year. Obama, from the start, has built-his small donors base and has successfully used the Web for organization, human resource mobilization and fund raising. The donation button at barackobama.com has produced hundreds of millions of dollars for his campaign and the joke circulating around is that Obama has a serious money problem. Less than 2 weeks until election day, Obama has $134M in the bank and donations still pour in at the rate of $5M a day. His “problematic” campaign is running out of time spending all those money before election day.

During the Democratic primaries, Obama promised to re-shape the US electoral map. He already did. He also promised to change America and change the world. Obama uses “change”and “transform” interchangeably. However he puts it, there is little reason not to bet on his promise.

Millard Fillmore, is immortalized as the last Whig US president. Signs do not point to John McCain getting the consolation of being remembered as the last Republican president. His long-time pal, the not-anymore-his-president George W. Bush would likely get the distinction.

Americans looking for solution(s) to the financial mess are better off to decide if they know who are accountable

When Pres. George Bush aired the dire warnings of US Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson and Chairman of the Federal Reserves Ben Shalom Bernanke that the $700 billion bailout plan must be carried out quickly because the financial crisis can ruin the economy of the nation, America was in panic. Many reflexively agreed to pass a fast legislation for an economic rescue, when the initial shock of the experts’ warning dissipated. The men in the main street started asking what would be the implications if government, at the expense of taxpayers’ money, bails out the ailing privately-run Wall Street. They worried about the future of their homes, savings, credit lines, investments, businesses, and retirement portfolios.

There is urgency in the passing the bail-out package. It looks like the Democrats who control the Congress saw this and Nancy Pelosi (D,) the majority speaker of the House of Representatives and her cohorts announced that a deal was about to be reached. Psyching the people, they made it appear that a bipartisan consensus was in the offing only to reveal later the legislation didn’t pass for lack of votes. This caused the sharp drop in the Dow Jones industrials and huge losses in the market reverberated all over the globe.

Pelosi (D,) was quick to blame politics. In a very nasty statement characteristic of partisan politics, she alleged the Republicans killed the legislation. But in truth a third of her party (95 Democrats) didn’t support the bill she wanted to pass. The new bill had to be rewritten for another vote probably on or earlier than Thursday, October 2, 2008.

The bail-out package bill was killed partly due to apparent rush and lack of deliberation. Many legislators in both political parties needed clarification of the nature of the bail-out. There were lots of questions to be answered before a decision could be made. That was what the American people demanded for the bill they barely could understand.

Democrats and Republicans alike in the meantime called on to stop blaming those who were responsible for this financial meltdown. Speaking in the name of “patriotism” to focus on problem-solving, they were successful in keeping the angered public silent as they were warned of dire consequences if nothing was done quickly.

But as disgusted Americans pondered on their future, many demanded to know who were responsible for this mess. They realized knowing these people was as important as coming up with the solution and deciding whom to vote in the November presidential election. They asked why they, the taxpayers, had to answer for the indiscretion, greed, recklessness, and lack of oversight of Wall Street.

There have been talks that Sen. Barack Obama (D) is somehow involved in the fall of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which triggered the financial market crisis which doesn’t have easy solution to date. Few Democrat supporters including the liberal media are interested to talk about culpability lest they stymie the gains their candidate over McCain (R) in the campaign trail. On the other hand, the Republicans who were in the administration failed to prevent the financial catastrophe that they knew was coming.

The genesis of the money problem dates back longer than the Carter years, but majority of the biased media expediently pinned blame almost solely on Pres. Bush. Moreover, the media had been mum of past attempts of Pres. Bush and Sen. John McCain to make changes in the mortgage lending system, long before the meltdown, but their attempts were foiled by the Democrats, many of whom had been emboldened by interest groups which supported them as politicians. Some of them are the most vociferous in trying to bail-out a failed system that they helped create.

As the Americans try to put together the broken pieces, there is a picture that emerges. If they miss the correct interpretation, they may end up choosing the less qualified president who has to deal with the serious repercussions of this financial mess which is expected to persist. Whichever political party the public looks up to, there is just too much blame and accountability that must be bravely and honestly confronted. The time to do this is now. Isn’t this what the Democrats refer to as “multi-tasking,” the ability to do more than one thing at a time? (Photo Credits: SilveryLily; MacRonin47; Winnie0917) =0=

Weighing in Issues in the US Presidential Election

2008 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE COMPARISON

ISSUE—————————————-JOHN McCAIN——–BARACK OBAMA
Favors new drilling offshore US——————-Yes—————–No
Will appoint judges who interpret
the law not make it———————————–Yes—————–No

Served in the US Armed Forces——————–Yes—————–No
Amount of time served in the US Senate——–22 YEARS———-173 DAYS
Will institute a socialized
national health care plan——————————No—————–Yes
Supports abortion throughout the pregnancy—–No—————–Yes
Would pull troops out of Iraq immediately———No—————–Yes
Supports gun ownership rights———————–Yes—————-No
Supports homosexual marriage———————-No—————–Yes
Proposed programs will mean
a huge tax increase—————————————No—————–Yes
Voted against making English
the official language————————————–No—————–Yes
Voted to give Social Security
benefits to illegals—————————————–No—————–Yes

CAPITAL GAINS TAX

MCCAIN: 0% on home sales up to $500,000 per home (couples). McCain does not propose any change in existing home sales income tax.

OBAMA: 28% on profit from ALL home sales. (How does this affect you? If you sell your home and make a profit, you will pay 28% of your gain on taxes. If you are heading toward retirement and would like to down-size your home or move into a retirement community, 28% of the money you make from your home will go to taxes. This proposal will adversely affect the elderly who are counting on the income from their homes as part of their retirement income.)

DIVIDEND TAX

MCCAIN: 15% (no change)

OBAMA: 39.6% – (How will this affect you? If you have any money invested in stock market, IRA, mutual funds, college funds, life insurance, retirement accounts, or anything that pays or reinvests dividends, you will now be paying nearly 40% of the money earned on taxes if Obama becomes president. The experts predict that ‘Higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains would crash the stock market, yet do absolutely nothing to cut the deficit.’)

INCOME TAX
MCCAIN:
(no changes) Single making 30K – tax $4,500
Single making 50K – tax $12,500
Single making 75K – tax $18,750
Married making 60K- tax $9,000
Married making 75K – tax $18,750
Married making 125K – tax $31,250
OBAMA (reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts) Single making 30K – tax $8,400
Single making 50K – tax $14,000
Single making 75K – tax $23,250
Married making 60K – tax $16,800
Married making 75K – tax $21,000
Married making 125K – tax $38,750
Under Obama, your taxes could almost double!

INHERITANCE TAX
MCCAIN: 0% (No change, Bush repealed this tax)

OBAMA: Restore the inheritance tax
Many families have lost businesses, farms, ranches, and homes that have been in their families for generations because they could not afford the inheritance tax. Those willing their assets to loved ones will only lose them to these taxes.

NEW TAXES PROPOSED BY OBAMA:
New government taxes proposed on homes that are more than 2400 square feet. New gasoline taxes (as if gas weren’t high enough already) New taxes on natural resources consumption (heating gas, water, electricity) New taxes on retirement accounts, and last but not least….New taxes to pay for socialized medicine so we can receive the same level of medical care as other third-world countries!!!

Note: This comparison circulates in the internet. You can verify the above at the following web sites:

http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/election/2008/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/issues/issues.taxes.html

http://elections.foxnews.com/?s=proposed+taxes
http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourworld/politics/articles/mccain_obama_offer_different_visions_on_taxes.html

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/candidates/barack_obama/
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/candidates/john_mccain/
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