Game over.
[Someone on another site had already made the “zombie” comment, so all I was left with was “ass fetish.” Sorry… And, sadly, this photo wasn’t the worst thing about this final debate between McCain and Obama. McCain performed terribly. I actually felt sorry for the man. It was desperate, sad and bizarre.]
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He looks like he should be coughing a hair ball.
I loved the noises McCain made during the debate. Just gross and perverse.
I think McCain did pretty well – far better than he did in the first two debates. Standing for 90 minutes might have worn him down and made him lose focus the first two times. Last night, he stayed on point more than previously. But the third debate is probably too late to be a game changer for him.
Desperate – Grabbing onto a little discussed sound bite from Toledo, OH (more specifically out in one the worst sprawlville suburbs of Toledo – Holland, OH) in which Obama respectfully disagrees with but explains his position to a voter who, by their exchange, was clearly not going to vote for him anyhow.
Sad – Going back to the “Joe the Plumber” trough again, and again, and again, and again.
Bizarre – Apparently “Joe the Plumber” isn’t even registered to vote.
Ah, yes, yet another example of why I love, but left, Toledo. A city full of people ready to complain, but not ready to make even the smallest effort to improve the situation they complain about.
With my tail between my legs, further research has proven that Joe is indeed a registered voter.
But I still stand by the fact that Toledoans LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to complain. (and clearly some of it rubbed off on me during my 28 years there)
McCain is a nice old man who rightfully deserved to be the Republican nominee in 2000. He is now where Reagan was at the end of his term in 1988, and really isn’t in the mental or physical condition to handle the job. Had the Republican primaries not been high-jacked in 2000 by the Rove/Bush con-men, we would certainly be seeing everything we’re seeing now in a very different light. First of all, there would have not been any 9/11 attacks. Whatever your opinion of McCain and his policies, he would have been an actual president, not just the brain-dead speech reader Bush is. He would be reading his presidential daily briefings. He would have appointed at least a few other decent people and true patriots who would have never let the war-profiteers completely run the table as they have over the last eight years. This would mean that the warning signs of the impending attack would have been responded to early, as would be the case with any present and attentive Commander-in-Chief. We would have had a presidident who as the true patriot he is would have fought hard to keep in tact the constitutional rights of every American. Of course I could go on and on, but it’s all moot now.
It’s sad to see McCain struggling with things that eight years ago he would have had down. Like I said, he’s a decent guy, a true patriot, and a nice old man who deserved better than he got from his fellow Republicans. Most just went along with the con that was orchestrated by the few, but they’re all responsible. In the process they severely damaged our country and crippled their own party. But their ugliness and destructiveness isn’t over. What they are doing with McCain now is just a continuation of what they’ve been doing all along. This year, as a purely strategic move, they propped up McCain as their figurehead. They did it to appear moderate, decent, honorable and reasonable, as McCain is all these things. But with the exception of his wife, no one in, around or behind his campaign share these qualities. They are the same dirty tricksters, hypocrites, con-men and criminals which have flooded into positions of authority and power within the Republican Party over the last several years.
Their plan here is obvious…it is to ride back into office using McCain as their Trojan horse. It’s a sickening and cynical use of the man. I hope for his sake and ours, this ploy fails. I pray these criminals don’t have any more devastating surprises up their sleeves, like the ones we’ve seen demonstrated over and over during the past eight years.
First Joe Six-Pack. Then Joe the Plummer. Is Joe Mama next?
Can someone please Photoshop a copy of Nailin’ Paylin into his hands? Or maybe that fake Palin bikini shot that was going around earlier in the campaign?
As someone just pointed out on another site, the Plumbers Union is solidly behind Obama.
Maybe it’s the ass fetish that made him bring up Joe the Plummer a dozen times too. Those guys always show a lot of asscrack when working under the sink.
I think McCain made things pretty clear last night. If elected, Obama’s going to give 95% of middle-class and small businesses a tax break, but if McCain is elected, he will take care of one guy in Ohio. It makes it a tough decision as to who to vote for…at it does for that one guy in Ohio. However, for the rest of us who aren’t that one guy in Ohio, the choice is easy.
NPR had some info on Joe this morning. He said he doesn’t make enough to be outside of Barack’s 250K threshold so his taxes wouldn’t go up anyway. Seems like McCain would have chosen a better example if he was going to beat it into the ground like that.
And that picture is truly bizarre.
I agree with the debate last night being “desperate,sad, and bizarre”. I thought McCain was seriously annoying sitting up there constantly smirking and laughing like a goof every time Obama spoke. Looking at him last night reminded me again why I’m not voting for him. He was weak. If he got elected god help us all.
“Help me Barack Obama, your my only hope”
I agree with the debate last night being “desperate,sad, and bizarre”. I thought McCain was seriously annoying sitting up there constantly smirking and laughing like a goof every time Obama spoke. Looking at him last night reminded me again why I’m not voting for him. He was weak. If he got elected god help us all.
“Help me Barack Obama, your my only hope”
I don’t get all these working class folks freaking out about taxes. Most of them don’t pay anyway.
Robert,
So many of your points are so well taken. (I don’t agree about 9/11, but pretty much everything else…)
Thanks Chelsea, just for acknowledging that I exist.
Today, for the first time that I’ve noticed, someone other than myself has pointed out the eerie similarities between Dubya and Palin. On ABC’s morning talk show The View, Joy Behar made a comment about it today while talking about the new Oliver Stone movie “W”. It’s no coincidence that Palin is so much like Dubya, especially in all the ways that would, if she were to ascend to the presidency, make it a lot easier for war-profiteers to continue to call the shots from the executive branch.
Dude, WTF? Most working class folks don’t pay taxes? Are you nuts?
Most working class folks with dependents don’t pay federal taxes. Social Security and medicare can’t be called taxes. Most of the taxes that working class folks pay consist of local property tax and, in the case of Michigan, exhorbant state taxes, both of which have see little influence from the President.
I make about what regular folks do and get a full refund plus some from the government. Thus, I wonder what these yahoos are whining about half the time. Perhaps they should go and complain to their local property tax assessor or the local state government.
I think it’s incredible the amount of services we get for how little tax we pay as americans, yet these presidential candidates still can get up there and pander to the whinings of a bunch of blue collar yahoos.
I love McCain’s “What would you do if all of the sudden you got rich? OBAMA WOULD TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY AWAY!!!” spiel. Like any of us that are not presently rich are going to become rich in the next 4 years.
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/10/photoshop-conte.html
Someone calling himself babyeater writes “Social Security and medicare can’t be called taxes.” this is totally false — social secuirty and medicare most certainly are taxes. A tax is a tax. These two are payroll taxes.
And I am with Robert, who said “WTF” to dude’s claim that working class Americans or most of them don’t pay taxes. In point of fact, I think it’s true that working Americans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than do the wealthy. Working people don’t have the lobbyists in DC to get special provisions written into the tax code.
Social Security and Medicare are as much of a tax as contributions to an IRA or a health savings account. You pay in money and it gets returned to you in the form of monthly retirement checks and health insurance when you’re old. As far as federal taxes go, our tax rates are minimal, with persons with dependents that live on 30K or less paying nothing and everyone else paying very little for what services are available. You will get no argument from me that Washtenaw County Property taxes are too high and that Michigan state income tax borders on absurd, however.
My larger point is that the American electorate loves to whine about taxes but they don’t mind using services and reaping the benefits of a working government at all. I think we get a lot for really not much money at all. Mostly, people are too narrow minded to see what they are really getting here.
As far as working folks not having lobbyists, I didn’t realize they needed them. I figured that’s what voting was for. If you don’t want corrupt assholes in Washington, don’t vote for them.
Hey Dude — if you think social security and medicare taxes aren’t really taxes, and are somehow like voluntary IRA or health savings accounts, try to “opt out” of paying social security or medicare taxes! Not an option: they are taxes. That’s a fact. Your argument boils down to ‘you get some individual benefit in the future from these taxes, so they aren’t really taxes’. Same could be said for property taxes used to support schools, or car registration fees (which are taxes), or virtually any tax other tax: taxes are used to fund government services, all of which are popular in some circles if not all circles.
Please note I am not arguing against social security or medicare programs or the taxes that support them. They are among the most successful programs in American history. My objection is to deceptively saying a tax one likes is not a tax (as if all taxes were evil, as Sarah Palin says) — and I also object to the regressive nature of social security, as it taxes just payroll income (not capital gains) and not even all payroll income. Raise the social security income ceiling, and we’ll basically solve the so called entitlement crisis for future social security expenses.
I agree and think that it’s a matter of semantics. I never said I liked or disliked SS or Medicare, but if there were a strategy to “reduce taxes”, I would hope these would not be the first victims. I completely agree that everyone should have to pay, whether they need it or not.
My point is that taxes (of any form) in this country are extremely cheap compared to other countries and that we get a lot for the small percentage of our income that we put in.
Working Americans as seen as victims of an evil tax system, but mostly I get the feeling that they want low taxes so they can buy flat screen tv’s, boats and houses in Florida. I think that people completely take for a granted that we have a government system that works more often than doesn’t for the amount of money that’s put in by working Americans, even despite our great societal and cultural problems.
RE: who pays higher taxes? We have an, on the surface, progressive tax rate, meaning the more you make, the larger percentage of your income you pay. The effective individual tax rate, however, is far from progressive. Quoting wikipedia:
“In terms of the effective rate, this means that a worker earning $20,000 for 2006 pays at a 7.65% effective rate ($1,530) while a worker earning $200,000 pays at an effective rate of about 4.37% ($8,740).”
The discrepancy has to do with loophole deductions and primarily with social security. If you exclude social security, you will still see inequity, but more between upper middle class (the tax payers hit hardest) and the rich.
For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_States
It is complicated. There are individual examples in all directions, but in terms of percentage of income that actually gets paid into government coffers, the rich have had a pass for years… and to little effect economically. I have no problem paying taxes. I just want my contribution to be used meaningfully and prudently, not to feed the disease.
This is my point! The guy who makes $20,000 doesn’t pay after deductions. I sure as hell don’t and NEVER HAVE and I make more than $20,000 so my big question is: what the fuck are these people complaining about? I would much rather complain about my absurd local property taxes which get me less services than my federal tax, that I don’t ever have to pay.
Dude – I think you’re wrong, unless you are hiding income and not paying social security taxes on your less than $20,000 income. Jean’s point is correct — the tax system in the US is structured to require lower income people to pay a higher percentage of their income than higher income people. Plus, you overlook the reality, sad but predictable and true year after year, that the rich take much fuller advantage of all possible deductions and loopholes than do the poor. Few poor people and not that many middle class folks have either the personal expertise to do their taxes in the most beneficial way or to pay accountants or attorneys to do their taxes for them in a way that maximizes advantage.
And hey Dude — you speak too quickly of “Americans” and “voters” without recognizing the differences and conflicting interests in these vast categories. Lots of people may object to taxes because they want the money for greedy things like a luxury vacation home; but many more Americans object to their tax bill because they think the money is wasted and they know that they are hard pressed to buy groceries each week and pay the rent and utilities too. Cut their tax bill, and the difference in their immediate standard of living will be real.
My point, Dude, is that you overgeneralize — not all objections to taxes stem from the same concerns. And the many Americans who are in dire circumstances economically aren’t the ones for whom the tax code and its thousands of loopholes were written. Failure to grasp this is playing into the hands of the right-wing. Even if you say Americans are unreasonably anti-tax, and thus make a kind of pro-tax argument, your effectiveness is undercut because by ignoring the real economic suffering of so many Americans. For liberals to ignore that reality in discussions of tax policy is to effectively cede the issue to the right wing, whose premise – nicely stated by McCain in the third debate – is that liberals want to raise everyone’s taxes and that the only alternative to that is to raise nobody’s taxes.
dude, are you claiming that you pay ZERO federal taxes? Or are you claiming that you get a refund every year? I have a hard time believing that you actually pay ZERO federal taxes. Please clarify.
Yes, dude, what was that again?
I get a refund every year so that it is effectively 0.