Examining the candidates (The Economist's poll of economists)

On October 2, 2008, The Economist posted an article on a survey of economists and how they viewed the economic policies of McCain and Obama.  Someone posted a link to it on message board on November 1, 2008.  On November 2nd, I responded with this:

I know I learned about Keynesian economics, but I don't remember much about it. I recently heard that it was more socialist and that surprised me. For one of my classes we read a book by Greg Mankiw, who was an adviser to President Bush. Most of my economics professors were foreigners. One of them told me that 999/1000 economists would agree on a certain point, but I don't remember what. I also heard that the professors ranged from liberal to conservative but had some common principles. I don't think all economic policies pursued by Republicans are the best. They are definitely terrible at talking about the economy and I think that is why the general public thinks the Democrats are better at handling it. I tend to think that governments, both foreign and domestic, should try not to harm economic freedom and just let the system play out. I am also greatly influenced by the Laffer curve on the relationship between taxes and revenues.

Scott Adams who writes Dilbert did his own survey and found similar results of Democratic majorities. Here are the posts from his blog:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102544280181/dilbert-survey-of-economists

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102544350196/my-views-on-the-dilbert-survey-of-economists

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102544355661/dilbert-survey-of-economists-did-anyone-pay

There is definitely the problem in economics that macro policies could hurt individuals. Foreign trade is overall great for the world economy, but some people might lose their job, so it becomes hard to argue with reason when emotions start becoming involved.

As a novice to the subject it seems like the field of economics is a mixture of hard and soft sciences. There is definitely a strong mathematical and theoretical element, but there also seems to be a subjective area dealing with human behavior.

Powell For Obama

On October 19, 2008, former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced his endorsement of Barack Obama during a Meet the Press interview.  A Breitbart article about it was posted to a message board.

Someone wrote:

By coming out for The One, Powell has become fair game in the political season. I hate to say it, but it might be time to paint him as a part of the Bush Cabal that screwed over the country for the last 8 years and that his judgement is poor.

I responded with:

A caller to Fox said basically the same thing, that it connects Obama to Bush.

Someone else wrote:

He didn't like some people on the right trying to say Obama is a Muslim.

I wrote:

Powell invoked a Muslim soldier who wanted to fight against radicalism and deplores the "right" for accusing Obama of being a Muslim

He also wrote:

So basically, Colin presents a lot of positive fluff about Obama as his reasons for supporting him over McCain and he presents some negatives about McCain.

I said:

That seems to be the most compelling argument to support Obama.

He responded with:

You're kidding, right? I'll assume that's tongue-in-cheek.

Powell mentioned no negatives about Obama while offering substanceless positive fluff as reasons for his supporting him. He offers a handful of negatives about McCain, most arguably either minor, inaccurate, partisan, or exaggerated while ignoring anything similarly negative about Obama or any mitigating arguments countering his short list of McCain negatives. He has to stretch and focus on a few nut cases on the right who tried to paint Obama as a muslim as one of his handful of reasons for not supporting McCain while ignoring all of the slop thrown at McCain and Republicans by Democrats and the left. It doesn't pass my smell test.

Powell's actions are seemingly very out of character and contrary considering his past political history. He's supporting a left wing socialist extremist when he opposed Bill Clinton who is well to the right of Obama. He is in opposition to an acknowledged Republican moderate, McCain. So I guess I'm supposed to think he has become a convert to left wing socialist political and economic ideals, policies, and philosophies, two weeks before the election, after a couple of decades of supporting Republican administrations, including being Reagan's National Security Advisor? It doesn't wash with me. IMO, he's being disingenuous, at best.

Then I replied:

I meant "fluff" is about the best people can do when arguing for Obama.

Murtha says Western Pennsylvanians are racist

This was posted to a message board on October 15, 2008:

I just heard this from Neil Cavuto.

U.S. Rep. John Murtha says his home base of western Pennsylvania is racist and that could reduce Barack Obama's victory margin in the state by 4 percentage points.

On October 16th someone responded with this:

And so because the other guy does it, so should we?

A racist (voting either for or against someone based on color) is a person without a brain. I don't want to be associated with such people. There is an objective right and wrong.

On October 23rd I wrote:

Furball - I've had the same thought that maybe this election is so close that those voting against him because of race might tip the election in our favor and it is disturbing, because it should be about the issues. Nobody should vote for somebody based on race, but it appears to be happening for Obama. There really isn't anything that can be done about it and there probably is no way to actually tell. McCain is a very honorable man and he defended Obama when someone accused him of being a Muslim. Even if someone claims that racism is their sole factor, you have to consider their political views. Do they support liberal or conservative policies? I suppose there might be liberals who refuse to vote for a black man. We can just hope that people will vote for McCain because of the economy and because they are excited about Palin.

Someone else responded on the 24th with this:

Actually, he defended Obama when some bitch called the latter an "Arab terrorist." When it was reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (which makes the NYT look like National Review), they dropped the crucial word "terrorist," to make it look like McCain was defending Obama from accusations he was an Arab. This was in spite of the fact that McCain has Muslim and Arab Americans working on his campaign! In short, the MSM has been distorting these sick incidents to their best advantage, trying to make McCain look like a racist, when his whole life and career demonstrates otherwise.

A third person also responded on the 24th with this:

Race is an important issue in this election. It's not from any anti-black bias, but anti-race card bias. Obama's candidacy has elevated the race card from niusance political posturing to something that may be engrained in policy and philosophy of an Obama administration. I do not want to hear, for the next four years, the leader of the free world giving legitimacy to race baiting politics. I do not want cries of 'racism' to be used whenver policy is criticized, such as his proposed wealth redistribution. It's more disgusting that class warfare.

A joke about DNC - exotic dancer

I posted this to a message board on October 29, 2008:

One day a fourth-grade teacher asked the children what their fathers did for a living. All the typical answers came up -- fireman , mechanic, businessman, salesman, doctor, lawyer, and so forth.

However, little Justin was being uncharacteristically quiet, so when the teacher prodded him about his father, he replied, "My father's an exotic dancer in a gay cabaret and takes off all his clothes in front of other men and they put money in his underwear. Sometimes, if the offer is really good, he will go home with some guy and stay with him all night for money."

The teacher, obviously shaken by this statement, hurriedly set the other children to work on some exercises and then took little Justin aside to ask him, "Is that really true about your father?"

"No", the boy said, "He works for the Democratic National Committee and is trying to get Barack Obama elected to be our next President, but I was too embarrassed to say that in front of the class."