Carpe Datum

Hard Questions

If you've been following politics much, you may know that the televised ABC debate between Clinton and Obama this past week was a travesty. The two moderators asked a list of questions you would've expected out of Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity, digging up all kinds of obscure stuff to try to link either candidate to any controversial left-wing boogeyman they could think of. There was very little discussion of policy, but plenty on flag lapel pins. Should we have universal health care? No, let's ask instead about something a distant Obama business associate did in the 1960's.

In honor of that debate, Keith Olbermann has some questions he would like to see asked of John McCain sometime by the super-duper liberal media:

In your book you mention visiting burlesque houses, and you say that in Rio you indulged in, quote “the vices sailors are infamous for.”

Exactly how many times have you employed prostitutes? Or were you just referring to public drunkeness?

--

As a member of the Keating Five, you helped delay regulators from going after a savings and loan that ripped off elderly investors of their life savings… and cost taxpayers more than two billion dollars.

Why do you hate the elderly?

And taxpayers?

--

After first calling Jerry Falwell an “agent of intolerance,” you took that back and began praising the man, despite the fact that he blamed America for 9/11.

Why in six years have you not repudiated Mr. Falwell’s damning of this country? Why do you still symbolically share the same pew?

--

You proudly accepted the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee who wants the U-S to start a nuclear war as part of the Apocalypse; who called Catholicism “the great whore” and said Katrina was God’s punishment of New Orleans for holding, quote, “a homosexual parade.”

Senator McCain, does Pastor Hagee love Catholics, Muslims, New Orleans, gay people, parades and life on Earth as we know it, as much as you do?

--

Last year, you admitted lying to voters when you said South Carolina’s confederate flag was strictly a state issue, when you knew it wasn’t, when you knew it was offensive to many Americans, presumably, those who wanted America to win the Civil War.

Why did you lie to protect a racist symbol of terrorists who wanted to destroy this country when you could have, um, not?

Stupid questions, I know, that have no place in a presidential debate (though maybe I'd make an exception for the Keating Five questions since that's an action he took as a lawmaker). I'm just saying for those of you who think we have a liberal media, in what parallel universe does a moderator representing any of the major news networks actually ask one of these questions in a public, televised debate?

And I'm not even mentioning the wrongheaded political opinions that moderator Charlie Gibson expressed: this idea that reducing the capital gains tax rate has resulted in an increase in revenue in the past.

Oh. My. God.

Yes, in the first few weeks/months after such a rate cut, you do get an increase in stock sales, enough to offset the drop in revenue from the rate cuts in some limited cases, but in the long run, the government gets less money, and rich people pay themselves with dividends and end up paying less taxes that ordinary people. It's a very common trick when the capital gains tax rate is so much lower than the income tax rate.

People know this. Rich people like Charlie Gibson know this. The super rich people who employ Charlie Gibson know this, and that's why Charlie Gibson pretends not to know it. As the old saying goes, it is very difficult to get a man to understand something when he is being paid not to understand it.

For more on the questions, see this, then tell me the questions above are really all that different in tone or character.

Posted by Observer at April 20, 2008 12:01 AM