(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Interesting link that I found on Facebook and oddly reassuring, teachs me not to make generalizations about people, although I already knew that - being surrounded by people who do not agree with me on everything has a funny way of keeping me honest.

Arianna Huffington's new book entitled "RIGHT is WRONG - or How the Lunatic Fringe Took Over and Made Us Less Safe": http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/rightiswrong/

Here I always thought Arianna Huffington was a right-wing conservative.

I think at least when we look at things historically, that the danger comes when we go to extreems. Too far in any one direction. You should never give one group of people, no matter how great they seem, total power. And you should never give into fear. I think fear has a tendency to bring out the "monster" in people, fear and frustration and rage.

Comments

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

Yes, she was a right wing conservative back before that was quite so religious, narrow minded, and cut off from the opinions of the rest of the world.

It is true that no extreme is good, in England back in the 1970s they had gone pretty far socialist, and people of wealth were taxed to such an extreme that many wealthier people were leaving (Michael Caine wrote about it in his very entertaining biography, but he returned as soon as things eased up a bit later on). But here in the US we are rapidly wiping out the middle class, making the gap between the rich and almost everyone else such an enormous gap that it is impossible for the poor to hope to gain any kind of middle class existence.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yep and that's a bad idea, wiping out the middle class. Historically every civil war or revolution was a direct result of the middle class being diminished.

I'm curious to see how things are going to play out these next two months. The stock market took a huge dive last week, and 85,000 jobs were lost. Plus another nasty hurricane on the way. Weird and difficult times.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I certainly hope that people will vote their pocketbooks:
they see their homes losing value,
their buying power decrease,
the dollar weakened, and
their salaries are frozen while unemployment rises.

The very rich are untouched, but even a lot of them see friends and family hurting (and their homes losing value and investments losing value).

I loved how McCain empathized with people who found their "investment real-estate lose value" - LOL
He really has no idea of the ordinary family struggling to pay a mortgage on their only shelter, the home where their children sleep.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Got an interesting insight on McCain tonight, from my mother (who is pro-Obama by the way) - she pointed out that McCain kept saying during the convention how he and Palin were going to kick the current regime out, change how things were done. The current regime is Bush. LOL! McCain, my mother said, really really hates Bush and is willing to do anything to get in the White House to change what Bush has done. He sees Palin as merely a means to an end (much as Bush Sr saw Dan Qayle, I suspect) and who he really wanted according to the media was Lieberman, but the party would never have let him choose Lieberman.

Rather interesting perspective. (My parents live in a Republican State and have very conservative friends - so they get the opposite side.)

I don't agree with it - told her that his choice of Palin puts all of that in question.
She replied that McCain only chose her to get the conservatives behind him and probably doesn't see her as much of an issue. He believes he'll live forever, mother lived past 90 and is as fit as a horse. Palin to McCain is a bit like Quayle.

I don't agree with this by the way. But, seeing how others think...is in a way informative.

I don't know how it will play out. The fact 85,000 lost jobs recently, it's going to cost tax powers millions to bail out Freddie and Fannie Mac, and there's many more hunting for jobs...plus retail sales are down ...makes me wonder. Not much I can do either way, except vote. Unless I want to actively campaign - but that involves fighting people and I just don't have the stamina or patience.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I really agree with your Mother, McCain has been moving right for some time....
he wrote a good Immigration bill and then disavowed it,
he has been sucking up to the Christian Right for over a year...
I don't think he is the man he was.

But then I also think he is hot for Sarah Palin, look at him playing with his wedding ring:

I don't claim that I'm right, but it is what I think.

Like you, I wish I could do more than donate a small amount and vote (particularly voting in a state that Obama can't lose). I thought about signing on to work for the campaign, but I just don't think I have the energy to do that... he has younger people to do that job.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I'd be careful about interpreting the videos of the speech, there's a lot of reasons someone might be playing with their wedding ring - it's itching, they miss their wife, it's too tight, etc. You can't really assume that it's because he has the hots for Palin.

I don't know what's going with McCain. I do know that he has been fighting the social conservatives for about as long as Bush Sr, and may well be doing the same things Bush Sr. is doing. That said, from my Mom, I got the impression that this is what many of her Republican friends and the political analystes such as Georgie Stephanopolis believe - whether it is true or not, may not matter. Truth - I'm learning in our media soaked society is becoming increasingly foggy.
People spin it however they wish.

My mother did remind me of something last night, which I keep forgetting - we don't live in a democracy or rather a true democracy. The polls don't matter. Nor does the popular vote. It's all about the number of electoral votes these guys get. That's why Hillary lost the primaries - she ignored the Caucus states, only going for the big populated states. If Obama grabs California, NY, Michigan, Texas, Ohio, it won't matter if he wins Alaska or Florida. So, what matters the most in this election is how you play the electoral game. Obama beat Hillary because his organization was a lot better - her organization was crappy and it let her down in the end. I get the feeling the same thing may happen here. The media...isn't really telling the story. It can only guess. But most of the information it is giving us..is probably wrong. Scary, but true.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

you know I really have to thank you... I know you are wanting to avoid the political discussions, and I sympathize, but this whole deal of the 'close polling numbers' have been making me crazy...
now (now that you've explained it twice and it finally got through to me) I think I can see it. It actually helps me to understand that people don't believe McCain has changed; they really believe in the 'maverick'. Just because I personally believe that McCain has been protected by the media for decades (hiding his affairs, errors in judgement, lapses of memory) and think that his current behavior is in line with what has always been there, doesn't mean that anyone else agrees with me. People see what they want to see (including me).

And you are 100% right about Obama's smart campaign to win the nomination (the Clinton knew all the rules, but somehow strategized as though they were running in the Republican primaries... Close wins in NY and CA only get you a tiny majority of delegates, not the whole shooting match. And too many losses in too many caucus states costs you the whole ball game. Of course, to be fair, I think Hillary was confident that she could win with the super delegates, she was very frustrated to find them switching to Obama.

Obama is playing VERY smart now, look at this electoral map,:
http://www.pollster.com/
see how close Obama is to pulling out the needed 270 electoral votes: McCain is fighting for his political life in states that should be his with ease...

Obama has almost sewn this up, and he is currently recruiting as hard as he can to get people from his base states (ie from California) to go and work on the ground in the battleground states (you get trained and then they take you to Ohio, Indiana, Florida, or wherever). I would totally go if I was younger, but I know it means sleeping in bad hotels and working really hard for next 2 months... I'm really too old, but I wish I wasn't!