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Truth & Consequences on Monday, May 12, 2008 5:11:12 PM
By Jim Simpson
If the word “change” was a female, today she would be hiding in a shelter for battered women. Everywhere we hear the trumpet call for change. Change in Iraq, change in healthcare, change in our economy, change in Washington – change, change, change. We are being beaten over the head with it! Change has become Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, while Hillary Clinton contrasts herself by claiming she’s for Real change. These candidates repeat the word like lurid catcalls from street whores. It is mind numbing.
But what “Change” are they talking about? Seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. Since the beginning of this election season Barack and Hillary have basically been in a shouting match to see who can out “Left” the other. Among Democrats, what is new about that?
Both candidates claim to want troops out of Iraq. Here, change is nothing more than the decades old, tired, hackneyed and beaten to death phrase “America out of … (name your country, in this case obviously, Iraq),” although, the way they say it is, in Nancy Pelosi’s words: “smart.” This is not a compliment, only recognition that Democrats have managed to develop some marketing skills with age.
And if you are so ignorant as to miss the unmistakable replay of Vietnam War era protests in this idiotic shouting match, then you must at least acknowledge that this “new plan” for “change” has been in effect since the opening of Operation Iraqi Freedom. As you recall, mere weeks after voting for the war, Congressional Democrats jumped back on the anti-war bandwagon with shouts of “Quagmire!” “Wrong War, Wrong Time,” etc. As I said, “America out of Iraq.”
So the Democrats’ calls for change in Iraq are only new if you think a four-year-old concerted policy aimed at thwarting our efforts in this war at every turn is new. But they don’t even mean it. Unless they are as mindless as their campaign slogans, they must recognize that leaving Iraq now would be disastrous. Indeed, both have admitted as much. So much for change.
Hillary’s website personifies that old saw: “if you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with BS.” Under the heading “Strengthening the Middle Class,” middle class tax cuts are the first bullet. Sounds good! But a read of the pages-long fine print finds only one vague reference near the end about “extending middle class tax relief.” What on earth does that mean? If you believe the Democrats, the middle class has gotten no tax relief for the past eight years – Bush only cut taxes for the wealthy. If that’s true, how can you extend what you never got?!? And the word “extend” itself does not suggest new cuts after all, just a continuation of what was before.
She does, however, promise to “return to the income tax rates for upper-income Americans that we had in the 1990s.” Well if your tax rates are “extended” while everyone else’s go up I suppose it could look like a tax cut if you were one of the lucky saps to avoid the increase she is talking about here. Another proposal included in this tome was to introduce earmark reform by developing “a set of budget rules similar to those we had in the 90s which required us to fund new expenditures with new revenues or cuts in other areas.” She is referring here to PAY-AS-YOU-GO spending restrictions, called PAYGO for short. Only trouble is, it has already been done. The Dems restored that mindless administrative fig leaf in 2004, and as I have thoroughly explained elsewhere, it is a complete sham.
Seems like Déjà vu all over again!
But seriously, I ask you, please, I am scratching my eyes out, what is new here? Where is the Change? What policy is being described that has not been repeatedly flogging and fleecing We The Exhausted Taxpayers for the past thirty years? Please tell me! Change? Gawd! If this is change, please, please keep it! We’ve had way too much of it already! We’re drowning in change.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both cut from the same ultra-leftist cloth. Either one would offer the standard menu of ultra-liberal approaches to government – which is to say they would both be walking disasters. But new? Different? Hardly. They are no different – just more extreme.
However they are right in one regard. If either one is elected, they will make those changes, and this country will go in a radically different direction than it has been for the past eight years. It will be the accelerated path to ruin socialism always guarantees, and this time, it may well be permanent. Whatever John McCain’s failings, they pale by comparison to the train wreck we can expect from either Hillary or Barack. Their election could spell the end for our constitutional republic. This may well be the most important election in our nation’s history. Vote well.