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ORIGINAL: colliefan

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Why is there so much snooty derision about Obama's decision to turn down a high-paying job at a New York law firm straight out of school, and instead accept a difficult, low paying, and often thankless job of trying to improve the lives of people on the south side of Chicago?

Sounds good if one is working on the side for a slum-lord mobster. Barry didn't improve the life of a rat in one of the tenements he supposedly was supposed to improve!

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ORIGINAL: inthysite
Finally, according to the bible rich and prosperity have nothing to do with money.

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"McCain took the opportunity for a mulligan on his careless answer to Pastor Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church forum Saturday, where he said that he would define “rich” as $5 million – a comment that he immediately, and correctly – predicted would be distorted.

He still did not give a number.

“I define rich in other ways besides income,” he said. “Some people are wealthy and rich in their lives and their children and their ability to educate them. Others are poor if they’re billionaires.”

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I'm not sure how Obama's decision to enter community service after graduation can be denigrated -no matter how "ineffective" you think his particular community service was. Arguing over whether he made 13,000 or 25,000 a year out of college is kind of meaningless, given that he graduated at the top of his class at Columbia so he could have easily gone immediately to Harvard law school, graduated, and then have been making millions working for one of the nation's top law firms. But he didn't (Heck, I worked for 2 years before going to grad school and didn't go to an Ivy league school like Colombia, and I was still able to find a job making 25,000 a year with just a BA in English and Anthropology, so I imagine Obama had many much more lucrative options than the one he decided on).

Even after graduating (magna cum laude) with a JD from Harvard (which again, is absolutely nothing to sneer at, as one doesn't do such a thing without work), he still took some sort of community service route in his career and taught, as oppossed to working for a large law firm (which again, would suggest that he sincerely wanted to help people, even if you don't think that his efforts did "help" anyone).

I realize that you disagree with him on all the issues, so there's no chance you'll ever be voting for him, but I still think you have to give him credit for his accomplishments and decisions where credit is due.

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This is all well and good, but to someone who is having a terrible time feeding their family this sounds about as "in touch" as stating "let them live off of love," or even, "let them eat cake!"

Perhaps the Republicans should start a "wealthy in things other than income" initiative where they replace the nations soup kitchens with Valentine and "hugs" distribution centers, that way everyone would technically be considered "wealthy" -or at least could concevably be considered "wealthy" according to McCain's rather nebulous "non-definition."

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Obama is something like 1/40th as rich as McCain.

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Perhaps if he had gone somewhere where his service hadn't so directly served his political ambitions, I would be a tad less skeptical

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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This is all well and good, but to someone who is having a terrible time feeding their family this sounds about as "in touch" as stating "let them live off of love," or even, "let them eat cake!"

Perhaps the Republicans should start a "wealthy in things other than income" initiative where they replace the nations soup kitchens with Valentine and "hugs" distribution centers, that way everyone would technically be considered "wealthy" -or at least could concevably be considered "wealthy" according to McCain's rather nebulous "non-definition."

One wonders why the Democrats are so interested in defining who is rich and who is not, other than to exploit such knowledge for their own gain? They certainly seem completely don't seem interested in pointing fingers at the wealthy in their own party, neither apparently are their supporters.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
One wonders why the Democrats are so interested in defining who is rich and who is not, other than to exploit such knowledge for their own gain? They certainly seem completely don't seem interested in pointing fingers at the wealthy in their own party, neither apparently are their supporters.

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Perhaps if he had gone somewhere where his service hadn't so directly served his political ambitions, I would be a tad less skeptical

...and a cynic could say the same of McCain's military service.

The fact is, neither of them probably had any idea they would one day run for political office when they made the decision to serve.

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"I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief."

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This is all well and good, but to someone who is having a terrible time feeding their family this sounds about as "in touch" as stating "let them live off of love," or even, "let them eat cake!"

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ORIGINAL: inthysite

This is ridiculous and a little outrageous, especially for you henny. Are you insinuating by your "let them eat cake" comment that McCain doesn't care about Americans? Because that is exactly what was meant when Marie Antoinette made that comment about the French people who were starving

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ORIGINAL: huangshan

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ORIGINAL: inthysite

This is ridiculous and a little outrageous, especially for you henny. Are you insinuating by your "let them eat cake" comment that McCain doesn't care about Americans? Because that is exactly what was meant when Marie Antoinette made that comment about the French people who were starving

First, that quote was, if I recall, falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette. Jean-Jacques Rousseau attributed it to some nonspecific princess 20 years before Marie was born.

Second, in most understandings of the usage of the term, it's her response to the problem of the peasantry not having any bread. "No bread? Let them eat cake!" As in, she doesn't realize that cake is also not an option.

"Let them eat cake" insinuates that someone is so far removed from the plight of the common people that they advocate the ridiculous habits of their own excess as a solution. If the out-of-touch royalty ran out of bread, they just went off and ate cake.

It's not to show that someone doesn't care (though that may certainly also be true) it is meant to show how out of touch you can be when you are living in the clouds.

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Is 8 houses too many? That's the what I read. Yes, to me.

I could maybe justify the condo in Washington, the ranch in Sedona, Ariz. the condo in Phoenix. But 3 more in Phoenix? and 2 more in SanDiego?


That is a bit much. And from my understanding, they go to all of them. They are not just investment properties.

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ORIGINAL: huangshan

Okay, but I think the "let them eat cake" comment was in reference to McCain's “rich in other ways besides income” comment, not his housing problem, and I think it's slightly appropriate there.

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“I define rich in other ways besides income,” he said. “Some people are wealthy and rich in their lives and their children and their ability to educate them. Others are poor if they’re billionaires.”

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If John Kerry would have said, "Wealth has nothing to do with income. I'm wealthy not because of my millions of dollars, but because of my several beautiful daughters and loving wife," I (and I suspect you) would have laughed at him too. Democrats have nothing against wealth. As you point out, there's lots of wealthy democrats. It's the absurdity of McCain's statement that he defines "rich in other ways besides income" that I find funny.

Besides, back in 2001 when McCain was opposing the Bush tax cuts, he was quite open in stating that one reason he oppossed them was because they benefited the wealthy far more than the middle class. This is what he said on the senate floor back in 2001:

"I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200805130009

Given that he seemed to have a fairly concrete economic idea of what constitutes "the most fortunate among us" back then, concrete enough that he would oppose the Bush tax cuts at least partially because they benefited "the most fortunate among us," it's interesting how his need to appeal to the conservative base in 2008 has caused him to completely forget what exactly it means to be "the most fortunate among us." Unless, of course, when he said "the most fortunate among us" back then he wasn't referring to those who were "wealthy in income" but only those who were "wealthy in love and good will."

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...and a cynic could say the same of McCain's military service.

The fact is, neither of them probably had any idea they would one day run for political office when they made the decision to serve.

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Obama, typical of a Democrat, isn't interested in relieving the middle class, he is interested in class warfare to gain power - and he has found what he hopes to be an image he can use to advance this position. None of this has to do with real measures of wealth or real economic solutions.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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...and a cynic could say the same of McCain's military service.

The fact is, neither of them probably had any idea they would one day run for political office when they made the decision to serve.

I don't think John McCain 'chose' to go to the Hanoi Hilton at all; and he certainly didn't build a political base of support from there, or gain political benefactors who would fund his ambitions. Not at all comparable.

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Straw man much?

Clearly, the jump from "McCain's military service" to the much more restricted time spent as a POW is a delibrate misstatement of both the poster's intent, his meaning, and his specific phrasing.

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In essence McCain is homeless, so that would give him a great deal more empathy for the poor than his rival B. Hussein Obama.

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Clearly, the jump from "McCain's military service" to the much more restricted time spent as a POW is a delibrate misstatement of both the poster's intent, his meaning, and his specific phrasing.

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ORIGINAL: todd_t

a subject he used to go out of his way to avoid.

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What's most notable about John McCain's confusion over the number of homes he owns isn't merely that it demonstrates that, after running his campaign based on depicting Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist and himself as the all-American Everyman, McCain lives a life that is about as far removed from the Average American as one can get, and has done so for decades. What's notable is how McCain was able to live that way. McCain himself isn't actually rich. He just lives off the inherited wealth of his much younger, former mistress and now-second-wife -- for whom he dumped his older and disfigured first wife -- and who then used her family's money to fund his political career and keep him living in extreme luxury (while insisting that he sign a prenuptial agreement, which would make McCain the first U.S. President to have one).

In 2004, numerous leading right-wing pundits had many things to say about men who do that...

[long list of quotes from Republican commentators tearing into John Kerry for exactly what McCain has going for him now】