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panama hat

Yes it is . . . but look further than the farm bill . . . the first one that oops off the tongue is Boeing . . . and conversely Airbus

So, Jet, if you hate the EU for its supposed anti-free trade laws you must also hate the US for its anti-free trade laws . . . Yes?

Norton

Interesting comment. Based on his "stated" policies, seems to me he is only pushing to make sure trade agreements are equitable and fair to American workers. Surly this can't be a negative even for a Republican!

I know this post doesn't meet your exacting standards of journalism requiring 3 sources but in this case I think his own policies as stated in his web site are better than a bloggers spin.

Trade

Obama and Biden believe that trade with foreign nations should strengthen the American economy and create more American jobs. He will stand firm against agreements that undermine our economic security.

• Fight for Fair Trade: Obama and Biden will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. They will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world and stand firm against agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that fail to live up to those important benchmarks. Obama and Biden will also pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and nontariff barriers on U.S. exports.
• Amend the North American Free Trade Agreement: Obama and Biden believe that NAFTA and its potential were oversold to the American people. They will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.
• Improve Transition Assistance: To help all workers adapt to a rapidly changing economy, Obama and Biden will update the existing system of Trade Adjustment Assistance by extending it to service industries, creating flexible education accounts to help workers retrain, and providing retraining assistance for workers in sectors of the economy vulnerable to dislocation before they lose their jobs.
• End Tax Breaks for Companies that Send Jobs Overseas: Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that companies should not get billions of dollars in tax deductions for moving their operations overseas. Obama and Biden will also fight to ensure that public contracts are awarded to companies that are committed to American workers.
• Reward Companies that Support American Workers: Barack Obama introduced the Patriot Employer Act of 2007 with Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to reward companies that create good jobs with good benefits for American workers. The legislation would provide a tax credit to companies that maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in America relative to those outside the US; maintain their corporate headquarters in America if it has ever been in America; pay decent wages; prepare workers for retirement; provide health insurance; and support employees who serve in the military.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need | Economy

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Texpat

Whoever is elected president will, within weeks after moving into the WH, be viewed as just another politician.

It doesn't matter what they say now. If you believe either of these lines of promises, you're delusional. Events reshape the world and realities replace rhetoric.

To wildly gesticulate in the direction of either candidate is folly. In six months, either one of them will be reduced to mediocre -- or worse. The best Obama or McCain will do is carefully place blame and paint himself as a fixer-upper. Much as a new football coach is granted a grace period following a losing season.

Both candidates are the same. I can't get excited about either of them.

Norton

Agree. Events are the realities either will have to face. No way either are going to be able to provide the promised tax cuts. The economy and current government spend rate will preclude it. Either will be considered a "genius" IMO if they can figure out how to avoid raising taxes to pay for past economic policies sins.

Mid

Sen John McCain
Not quite ‘new politics’ | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA


Blogger and constitutional expert Glenn Greenwald comments on this sorry state of affairs:

JOTMAN

durianfan

You're probably right. Both my parents are staunch Republicans, and my father has always been adament that it doesn't matter who wins the Presidency. Not much will change. Bush-haters will argue that the country is in turmoil at the moment because of him, but I'm not sure if Gore or Kerry would have done any better, given the events that took place these past 8 years. You deal the hand you're dealt, and GW was dealt a shitty hand.

But presidents can start wars and invade countries, which makes them dangerous, especially with the most powerful military (at least it used to be) at their disposal. Events and the decisions that follow those events (like 9/11) are what define them as true leaders. This is where Republicans will argue that experience is the key factor here, and the fact that Obama just marked "present" at most Senate meeting votes without actually making a decision and casting a vote, is just a bit unsettling.

I don't like either candidate very much. I'm not even voting in this election (I'm from CA anyway so it doesn't really matter). Let's just hope whoever gets elected doesn't die or get killed off....because their VP choices would make scary leaders.

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S Landreth

Good question asked by Obama:
'Will this country be better off four years from now?"'

Link: RealClearPolitics - Articles - McCain, Running on Empty

McCain, Running on Empty
By Eugene Robinson
WASHINGTON -- Probably, John McCain and Sarah Palin will lose this election. Certainly, they deserve to.
With a campaign designed more to play on insecurities than promote ideas, McCain and Palin have practically framed Barack Obama's "closing argument" for him. "The question in this election is not 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?'" Obama told an audience Monday in Canton, Ohio. "We know the answer to that. The real question is 'Will this country be better off four years from now?"'

The Republicans don't even try to formulate an answer, and with Obama's lead growing by the day, it's hard to imagine what might turn things around. An "October surprise" international incident might end up working against McCain rather than for him, given his all-over-the-map reaction to the financial crisis. The vaunted Republican get-out-the-vote machine looks almost puny beside Obama's next-generation juggernaut.
There's always race, of course, and we can't say with certainty whether there's some huge, hidden racist vote out there just waiting to emerge next Tuesday. My hunch is that race is already factored into the poll numbers -- that it has already been "discounted by the market," to use the financial jargon that's so fashionable these days. I believe that race is a subtext of Republican attack words such as "dangerous" or "socialist," and that it's the real target of the attempt to paint Obama as unknown, mysterious, exotic and somehow alien. My guess is that voters who are responsive to this kind of coded appeal have already responded.
So we're not likely to see some kind of deus ex machina salvation for McCain, Palin and their down-ticket allies, and that's as it should be. It's not just that they have run a weirdly erratic campaign, bitingly sarcastic one minute, earnestly serious the next, uncertain whether to present McCain as a serious, experienced statesman or a hypercaffeinated, overeager publicist for Joe the Plumber. It's not just that Palin, and let's be honest, should never have been allowed anywhere near the ticket -- and certainly not anywhere near those frocks from Saks and Neiman Marcus.
More damning is the fact that at a time when it could hardly be more obvious that Americans desperately want to change direction -- more than 80 percent tell pollsters the country is on the wrong track -- the Republicans offer nothing new.
That's a shame. McCain's repeated references to "maverick" have drained all meaning from the word, but it's true that he's an iconoclast with little reverence for Republican orthodoxy. Why he chose, in an election that was always going to be decided by independents and Reagan Democrats, to campaign on a platform of slavish devotion to Republican orthodoxy is beyond me.
On the economy, McCain offers some relief for homeowners facing foreclosure, but only within a context of classic Republican trickle-down economics. He wants to lower taxes on business and rejects Obama's plan -- raise income taxes for the wealthy and lower them for the middle class -- as rampant socialism. If you set aside the incendiary rhetoric about class warfare that McCain and Palin have been tossing around, basically what they propose is staying the course that brought us to this point of global crisis.
McCain makes much of wanting to get rid of congressional earmarks; everybody wants to get rid of earmarks, except the one that benefits my community or my industry. He proposes an across-the-board spending freeze -- during a recession? -- and then, in the next breath, proposes new spending. He overestimates the voters' tolerance for incoherence.
On foreign policy, once the centerpiece of McCain's campaign but now mostly an afterthought, McCain promises "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan without telling war-weary voters how much more time, money or blood he will spend.
In choosing a running mate, McCain made absolute mockery of his "country first" slogan and instead put politics above all other considerations. It suffices to note that the Anchorage Daily News -- the biggest newspaper in Palin's state -- endorsed Obama, saying that Palin was being stretched "beyond her range" and that she clearly is not ready to be "one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world."
It's hard to imagine that a McCain presidency could possibly be as scattered, irresponsible, uninspiring and intellectually bankrupt as the McCain campaign. It's even harder to imagine that Americans, at this crucial juncture, will take that risk.

Texpat

Nobody can answer that silly question. Is Obama betting that things won't get worse?
Does he really think he's the messiah?

What a silly thing to say.

ChiangMai noon

not really tex.

he is running for president after all.

Texpat

It's empty rhetoric.

A waste of breath.

Milkman

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Mid

Did I say that?

Sarah Palin, politician, 44
Compiled by John Hind
Sunday October 26 2008


Asked in August about the prospect of becoming a vice-presidential nominee
It kind of cracks me up. It is so far out of the realm of reality (2008)

On her favourite food
Moose stew, after a day of snow-machinin' (2006)

On what got her into politics
I'm one of those people, y'know, I see a soldier walk through the airport and, y'know, my heart does a little double-take (2008)

On Barack Obama
Al-Qaeda terrorists still plan to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he's worried someone won't read 'em their rights (2008)

On John McCain
He's the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this great country. Only he was among those who came home (2008)

Speaking at her old church, the Wasilla Assembly of God
I can do my part in doin' things, like workin' really really hard to get a natural gas pipeline (2007)

On her son, Track
When he turned 18, right before he enlisted, he had to get his first tattoo. And I'm like, 'Nah, I don't think that's real cool, son' until he showed me what it was and I thought, 'Oh he did something right', because he had a big ol' Jesus fish. So OK (2008)

When asked: 'what if Israel attacked Iran?'
We shouldn't second guess Israel's security efforts because we cannot ever afford to send a message that we would allow a second Holocaust, for one (2008)

On how Alaska's proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy experience
That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada (2008)

Asked if she regularly got up early
Yup. We don't sleep much. Too much to do. What I've had to do, though, is in the middle of the night, put down the Blackberries and pick up the breast pump (2008)

On Alaska
We want to see Ivana Trump because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture (1996)

On the American forces
They are building schools for the Afghan children, so there is hope in our neighbouring country of Afghanistan (2008)

Asked if she was ready to be a mere heartbeat away from the presidency
Absolutely. Yup yup (2008)

guardian.co.uk

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mad_dog

Great point anyone expecting any overnight chnage will be sorely disapointed. America will still biasly support Israeli war crimes, reserve its "right" to bomb any country in the world "preemptively" and preside over a world wide network of bases, fleets and client states which amount to the largest empire world has ever known. Americas military power is designed to inforce American business interests and ensure "access" to all states and markets but in the modern world even neo-imperialism has lead to America being despised and ridiculed almost universally. Small countries such as the Scandinavian countries have built modern vibrant wealthy economies without the need for barrel of the gun diplomacy and treating nations like plantations.

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Texpat

All part and parcel of being the sole superpower. Not arrogant, just stating a case.

It's why I've been saying for the better part of a year that little will change regardless of who is elected.

Obama/McCain will be the new face. If you think that changes the entire country, you're sadly mistaken. There is no wholesale change in American public opinion. There is no immediate change in the periphery that a president can influence. There is precious little that will strike anybody as a breath of fresh air -- regardless of who wins the election.

If you look at who actually calls the shots, and pay attention to it, you might begin to understand that it's the guy on the street. Maybe that's an alien idea to you, but that's how we do it.

Congressional elections occur as frequently as bowel movements. They hold the purse strings.

The next president should have no problem with improving the image of his country worldwide.
But how will you react when a Spec Ops strike force hits a AQ target in Feb, 2009?

It'll break your widdle heart, won't it?

mad_dog

I agree that the next figurehead president will change little as both parties have broadly the same global outlook but as for the man on street being in charge I don't think America's polity consists of people who are informed of the way their government acts on their behalf.... picking up a University history book of the 20th century will show that US taxpayers handsomely funded the Khmer Rouge while they were at the height of their genocide or how hundreds of millions of dollars were past from the US to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar one of the most extreme anti-western Islamist warlords in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Hekmatyar now fights the Americans with the massive fortune and armoury which the Americans gave him. Or its supprot for the fascist Franco governments in Spain or its funding of the fascist Military coup of the Generals in Greece. Americans remain sadly ignorant of the "freedom fighting" that the US does around the world. Do they know even blessed Christians like Bush view the international arena as an amoral anarchical battle ground?

Many Americans want to change the image of their country overseas but I fear after a little Obama bounce the rest of the world will realise it is business as usual from an aggresive belicose state and Americans will become even more isolated and bitter.

Texpat

Get used to it. America is the hegemonic power.
It will act to defend that until another (China) comes along and shakes things up.
Europe will continue to whine until then.

Here's a hint: Small equals little. Keep dividing yourselves into increasingly miniature bits... Your continental association is pathetic.

The next threat to USA will be a South American collusion.

Can you explain how your system encourages people to get out and take care of themselves rather than lay back and become a drai9n on the system?

Keep it. We're nothing like you.
I seem to hear a lot of complaining among Brit ex-pats in Thailand regarding your system's coddling of lay-abouts.
Is that what you're proud of? Is that what you consider progress?

Keep it. We're nothing like you. Where we come from, you have to earn your keep.

Texpat

Perhaps if you had demanded fair work for fair pay among your greedy layabouts a few decades ago, you might not be berating America for doing what most of you sorry bastards wish you had done 50 years ago.

Get over it. You fucked up and gave your wealth away to people who didn't earn anything, but made you feel "good" about accepting them.

Fuck them. They're you're ruin. And most Brits agree with me, not you.

I expect and accept the deluge of reds. But I'll also receive a few greens for saying what is widely known but taboo to admit.

mad_dog

I have no idea what the point of your diatribe is. Your contention that the US will remain the hegemon in a unipolar world doesn't bare up to the long term demographic trends in the world. You seem to have singled me out as a supporter of "socialist" policies such as a welfare state. I am infact a Libertarian and as such believe in a small government as is possible.

It is interesting that you imediately assume somekind of "reds under the bed" threat when I point out America's repeated support for genocide and terrorism. It makes you seem as out of touch as old John McCain who has also, hilariously, spent a considerable amount of time campaining on the socialist threat and the "red peril" during the 2008 presidential elections.

Your repeated references to "50 years ago " makes me think you are living in the wrong century. I agree that America is nothing like the rest of the world .Try drawing up a list of allies in which the domestic population actually have positive views of America and its primary foreign policies. The list will be short.

In a way it is sad to see the way the US has squandered its one true strength as a super power; its soft power American cinema and media and technology allows America to exert an enourmous amount of infliuence throughout the whole world; far more than any military might could. But even in other anglo-phone countries who share a cultural, religious, liguistic and historical ties the maveric "do what we say fucker" violent, aggresive, ignorant behaviour of the US aborad has led to 1/3 of Britons regarding the US as a force for evil. (economist.com) If America has lost the battle for hearts and minds so badly in a country with which it has so many links one can only guess at the damage America has done to its image with cultures that are far removed from Americas....

Its the belicose sepo fools who can't tell the Left Bank from the West Bank who believe they can bomb their way to popularity who have damaged America. Sex Pat and his ilk are the greatest threat America has ever faced: The enemy from within.

Boon Mee

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sabang

Not surprised that the military is in favour of McCain (they always side republican), but surprised at the dominance.

Given the rather urgent financial mess the US is in right now and Democrat fiscal responsibility, I imagine the armed forces will be seeing some cuts, or at least freezes in expenditure. Obama may well also get the Pentagon to justify several of it's myriad bases scattered around the world. Maybe they realise this.

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