Debate: Taxes Part 2
Charlie Gibson tried to go to commercial break, but both Sens. Clinton and Obama have kept him going.
Clinton and Obama have sparred a little bit over whether each is considering lifting the cap on payroll taxes; Clinton says nope. Obama says he’d look at it — maybe raise it for the wealthy, not sure about that range in there of folks making more than $100,000 and less than $200,000 or was it $250,000.
The numbers are flying around and it seems like the candidates are trying not to commit.
All this somehow wound its way to a debate (not really between them) on how to keep Social Security solvent. Raising taxes? Oh wait, didn’t they just pledge not to?
Clinton says she wouldn’t use payroll taxe to save SS; but Obama takes a stab saying she wants it both ways. She can’t criticize him, he says, when she hasn’t offered an alternative.
Another note: Clinton has been making considerably more of an effort to drop references to Pennsylvania. She mentions her endorsements some of her key, such Gov. Ed Rendell or Philly mayor Michael Nutter. Obama hasn’t mentioned his big steal: Sen. Bob Casey. That seems odd.
Clinton has also cited more instances of “when I was in X, Y or Z” place in the state. It would seem she’s trying to prove she knows Penn. voters better.
Obama has been doing his own campaigning in Pennsylvania, but he’s not telling as many stories from the trail it seems. Will he regret that? Or will Clinton’s anecdotes come out looking like forced product placement in some movie?
(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
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It was a pathetic performance by…..
Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapolus
Those two dolts are completely out of touch with the American people.
Charlie twice demonstrated faulty cause and effect reasoning by assume tax revenues were definitively linked to a reduction in capital gains taxes. But that wasn’t the worst of it no…
They opened with almost an entire hour of trivial questions on Wright, “bittergate”, Bosnia, the 60’s Weather Underground that somehow Obama is supposed to be responsible for even though he was only 8 years old at the time, flag pins, “Hillary the liar”, tax pledges (with “gotcha” type questioning). What a waste of time. Charlie ad George you wasted America’s air time.
A couple of times Obama tried to break it up by saying that people want to hear about real issues instead of obsessing on misstatements. Neither Charlie or George took the hint. (Are they dense?) We were all hoping for one of them to say something like, “Charley, are we going to talk about the real issues or spend the rest of the night on this triva?”
When they finally did get to the issues so little time was left that all they could do was answer one question apiece on the war in Irag, no real questions about health care (though both tried to get that in anyway), etc. I thought they both did well on the issues, as little as they were allowed to address them.
What was lost was the opportunity to have a real debate on real issues facing this country. Issues such as:
Collapsing of housing values
Afghanistan
Health care
Torture
The declining value of the US Dollar
Education
Trade
Pakistan
Energy
Immigration
The decline of American manufacturing
The Supreme Court
The burgeoning world food crisis.
Global warming
China
The attacks on organized labor and the working class
Terrorism and al Qaeda
Civil liberties and constraints on government surveillance
The SAD STATE OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
Instead, we get:
Small-town” comments
Wright
Weather Underground
Flag-pin/patriotism
Gun control
Affirmative Action
Where did these questions come from? Elitisms comand central? Where are the Edward R Murrow’s of out time?