Originally Posted by Rusticus

1)-Over 70% of our National Debt was created by just 3 Republican presidents.

Go ahead, get out your calculator and add up debt by president/party. Apparently the party that claims fiscally responsibility thinks it's ok to borrow massive amounts of money from foreign countries like China. Consider that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments on this debt each year. That means more and more of your hard earned money is going to make interest only payments on what is basically a Giant National Credit Card. Not to mention the fact our debt/deficits are largely behind the weakness of our dollar, which in turns makes gas more expensive and creates other serious problems.

If you want to learn more about the National Debt, check out these links:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock /
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846_pf.html
http://zfacts.com/p/447.html (A running clock with the cost of the war)
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/business&id=5810114

2)-According to new research from Larry Bartels out of Princeton, real middle class wage growth is double when a Democrat is president compared to when a Republican is president.

"...Even more remarkable, the real incomes of working-poor families...grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House. Only the incomes of affluent families were relatively impervious to partisan politics, growing robustly under Democrats and Republicans alike...": http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27wwln-idealab-t.html?ref=magazine

Here is a short summary of this research: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/13/ST2008061302816.html

And here is a good, short audio interview with Larry Bartels: http://youngturks.wmod.llnwd.net/a591/o1/4-25-08Bartels.wmv

3)-90% of Americans would pay less taxes under Obama's proposed tax plan compared to McCain's.

This is according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Institute as reported by CNN: http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/candidates_taxproposals_tpc/index.htm?cnn=yes

People making under $112,000 a year in individual (not household) income would pay less taxes under Obama's plan.

By contrast, John McCain's tax cuts mostly benefit the top 10% of Americans. Under McCain's plan, people making over 2.9 million dollars in individual annual income would get almost a million dollar tax break.


Conclusion: Countless millions of Americans vote Republican because they believe they'll pay less taxes and that they'll have their money spent more responsibly. As you can see, those beliefs are directly contradicted by the facts. Of course we can choose to ignore the facts and instead focus on which candidate is wearing a flag pin (you ever notice that Hillary and McCain don't wear them? but I think we're a smarter country than that.

Originally Posted by submarinepainter

not one democrat added anything to a bill as an earmark?? cut it out both parties have abusing us for a long time,

Originally Posted by Rusticus

1)-Over 70% of our National Debt was created by just 3 Republican presidents.

Go ahead, get out your calculator and add up debt by president/party. Apparently the party that claims fiscally responsibility thinks it's ok to borrow massive amounts of money from foreign countries like China. Consider that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments on this debt each year. That means more and more of your hard earned money is going to make interest only payments on what is basically a Giant National Credit Card. Not to mention the fact our debt/deficits are largely behind the weakness of our dollar, which in turns makes gas more expensive and creates other serious problems.

If you want to learn more about the National Debt, check out these links:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock /
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846_pf.html
http://zfacts.com/p/447.html (A running clock with the cost of the war)
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/business&id=5810114

2)-According to new research from Larry Bartels out of Princeton, real middle class wage growth is double when a Democrat is president compared to when a Republican is president.

"...Even more remarkable, the real incomes of working-poor families...grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House. Only the incomes of affluent families were relatively impervious to partisan politics, growing robustly under Democrats and Republicans alike...": http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27wwln-idealab-t.html?ref=magazine

Here is a short summary of this research: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/13/ST2008061302816.html

And here is a good, short audio interview with Larry Bartels: http://youngturks.wmod.llnwd.net/a591/o1/4-25-08Bartels.wmv

3)-90% of Americans would pay less taxes under Obama's proposed tax plan compared to McCain's.

This is according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Institute as reported by CNN: http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/candidates_taxproposals_tpc/index.htm?cnn=yes

People making under $112,000 a year in individual (not household) income would pay less taxes under Obama's plan.

By contrast, John McCain's tax cuts mostly benefit the top 10% of Americans. Under McCain's plan, people making over 2.9 million dollars in individual annual income would get almost a million dollar tax break.


Conclusion: Countless millions of Americans vote Republican because they believe they'll pay less taxes and that they'll have their money spent more responsibly. As you can see, those beliefs are directly contradicted by the facts. Of course we can choose to ignore the facts and instead focus on which candidate is wearing a flag pin (you ever notice that Hillary and McCain don't wear them? but I think we're a smarter country than that.

Originally Posted by Zaro

Remember the Keating Five.

Originally Posted by sunnyside

McCain was cleared for that.

Originally Posted by Zaro

So was O.J. Simpson

Originally Posted by catawba

Earmarks are but a tiny fraction of our military funding!

Originally Posted by catawba

Earmarks are but a tiny fraction of our military funding!