Jaded Sage:

Tonight I was checking my daily news sources and came across the headline on the Drudge Report. Is Obama Marxist? was the big header. Vice President Joe Biden was interviewed by one of those local shock factor news stations and the anchor was grilling the Senator with a series of harshly worded questions. It really has to be seen to be believed and I’m sure the right wingers were digging the nature of the questions but if they watch closely they will see how a true professional addresses each and every question. The real issue of this interview is how would Sarah Palin fare under such a grilling? My guess is she would melt like Alaska snow in the Miami sunshine if a radical left wing host would go at her with the same vigor as this anchor goes after Biden. I have to say, Joe Biden shows great restraint in dealing with such ridiculous questions.

It is hard to understand when Obama wishes to cut taxes on the middle class, the right sees socialism or even Marxism in the proposal. Bush cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans in 2000 and no one called him a Marxist for spreading the wealth upward. Now that Obama wishes to dial back those tax cuts and apply them to those of us who need it most all of a sudden it is socialism. Anyone who has studied modern history knows one of the greatest causes of the Great Depression was the uneven distribution of wealth. The tax policies introduced by Ronald Reagan with his “voodoo economics” as George HW Bush called them (or trickle down economics as they are better known) and revitalized under the current administration has created an uber-wealthy in this nation and has gutted the middle class that was so vibrant in the decades following the Second World War. As the nation’s treasure now exits the country in the form of foreign wars and a significant amount finds its way to the nation’s ailing banks, the middle class will once again be the target of America’s recession as layoffs and unemployment grip this nation in the months and years ahead.

For John McCain to base his tax policy on the same schematic that George Bush uses is not only unfair but economic suicide. It makes as little sense as using a plumber named Sam who makes $40,000 a year as your campaign figurehead and saying he will most benefit from McCain’s plan and be most punished by Obama’s. In microcosm this is the fallacy that the Republicans have created to get average Americans to vote for their party. The irony is McCain is calling him Joe and addressing the issue like the man makes $250,000. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to use Joe the hedge fund manager as the ideal front for your campaign? Many people in the middle class whom I know would gladly do their patriotic duty (as Joe Biden says) and give up even their Obama tax cut if it meant eliminating the debt and winning the war faster so our boys can come home but unfortunately the Bush administration has so severely weakened this nation economically that the revenue generated from such a drastic step would not even balance the budget never mind chip away at the 10 plus trillion dollar deficit. The reality is we are already a socialist state. We stepped over that line when the government began buying interest in US banks. The true wave of what is occurring has yet to take hold in this country and I would just as soon have someone with the intelligence and temperament of Barack Obama as that of John McCain. After all when Bush leaves it will most likely be with a wink from Karl Marx and not from Sarah Palin.