I’m not beating the drum for Barack, really I’m not. I liked Kucinich more than all the other candidates combined. (Even more now that he’s read articles of impeachment against the Retard in Chief. Really.) My objections to Hillary were mainly rooted in the fact that, particularly in the last month or two, she behaved more like Il Duce in his insistence on entitlement than I believe even she realized.
But Jesus, is McCain out of touch.
According to the Wind Sock, Obama would be “bad for business”. Johnny wasted no time in pulling out the standard bugaboos of Higher Taxes! and Slower Job Creation! and Sacrificing Infants to Baal!
Whereupon he reminded himself what century he was living in, and struck that last part.
While not going into particular details, MSNBC passed along the news that McCain was addressing a group of “small business owners”. Where, and to what purpose, I suppose we’re meant to speculate. But rather than point out the fact that the Fed, under Bush’s purview — and the aegis of lower taxes — has systematically gutted the Small Business Administration,1 he chose to raise the spectre of increased taxes under Obama.
While it’s true that Obama would raise taxes on higher income individuals, he’s also pledged to lower taxes for many others, and to be frank, I don’t think many of us are particularly worried about a boost in taxation on the wealthy while giving the rest of us a break for once. It would be a nice goddamn switch from the last decade.
And the fact is that the borrow-and-spend Bush administration (which would obviously only be extended under McCain), by refusing to acknowledge fiscal reality, has crippled the Fed’s ability to maintain the national infrastructure, let alone care for fellow citizens in need — which is the ostensible benefit from having a large, central governing body. There are nations all over Earth, some of them tiny and in this hemisphere, which have a pretty good grasp on that. Yet too many of us still hearken to blather that sounds good to the lizard brain, but is meaningless when intelligence gets applied.
It’s this cavalier attitude to the real world which allows us to continue debating whether polar bears matter while at the same time whining about the costs of energy. It’s this ignorance of fact which allows us to delude ourselves into believing we’re doing Iraq a favor — or that we were justified in invading in the first place — when it’s abundantly clear to the rest of the world that we’re simply full of shit. It’s this damned idiotic myopia which allows certain Americans to drive SUVs with Support Our Troops ribbons while ignoring the plight of PTSD-afflicted veterans, or overlooking the fact that many soldiers are in their nth rotation of duty in a war which McCain himself predicts will run a century.
If this is the kind of business that Barack Obama would be bad for, all I can say is welcome aboard, Mister President.
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1. The SBA used to be pretty good about giving loans to small startup businesses, offered free training and seminars, and generally supported American entrepreneurs. Under Bush, it’s all but disappeared. Who’s really bad for business?
