Obama Crosses a Line

In the previous debates between Obama & McCain, I sense a strange trend. Obama takes careful aim at his shoe; then McCain sacrifices his body to stop the carnage. Just once, I'd like to see what would happen if Obama were allowed to actually follow through. So when Obama volunteered to go all Trotsky on us and "spread around the wealth", I expected McCain to try to save him. And whaddaya know, McCain finally stayed out of his way.

When people told me that Obama is a socialist, I thought they were just over-reacting to his being a leftist Democrat. I disagree with the so-called conservatives who say everybody should be allowed to either sink or swim. Indeed, we should take care of people who cannot take care of themselves. This has the stain of socialism, but it doesn’t bother me at all.

Then the whole Congress went kind of soft-core socialist in this bail-out stuff. Though both Obama and McCain supported the bail-out, McCain is the one who should have known better. In McCain's defense, at least he tried to act like there was a real crisis - he kind of shut down his campaign, and did go to some meetings in Washington. Obama said that making some phone calls is what you should do when the whole economic system is crashing down around you. And this executive compensation law is just another indication that Congress isn't taking the economic situation seriously. Now I appreciate that folks get mad when somebody is paid much more than he or she is worth; but that really has nothing to do with the problems our economy is having.

But when Obama says he wants to take from one group of people and redistribute the money to another group, that’s when I say he has crossed the line into hard-core socialism.

McCain finally said the right thing. He said that we should work to improve the whole economy and make everybody better off. And I say that when we redistribute wealth, we take away incentives for people to work; the poor get a temporary boost, but then everybody gets poorer because fewer people want to work. When we improve the economy, anybody willing to work is raised to a higher level. I really don’t care if rich people become even richer; it wouldn’t make me any happier to be rich.

It’s not too late for Obama to apologize and repent from socialism. But he’s going to have to convince me that he really believes that America is a land of opportunity and not just a socialist wannabe. But I suspect that the newspapers and other media outlets are going to spend a lot of effort in saying that Obama was fooled into speaking outside his script by a Republican shill. Maybe he was set up. Just don’t go whining to me, newsguys; especially after the bogus news-wonk questions that Palin was asked. Entrapment is no defense in politics.