Kickin’ It With Booms
17 01 2008Well, I have to say it was a blast sitting in with Chuck Booms this morning on Morningline (560 AM KWTO & 99.9 FM KBFL.) Many thanks to Chuck and Tom Ladd for the invitation to be a part of the festivities.
Chuck’s funny on the air but twice as funny behind the scenes. I’ll have to try and catch his stand-up comedy act the next time he does a show in the area. Well, if I can get past his obsession with George Michael and Wham!
I think I ticked him off when I stumped him on a trivia question about George Michael’s Wham! partner Andrew Ridgeley (as to whom Andrew was married to…and I have to admit I had the wrong one on the show this morning. He’s really married to Keren Woodward and not Siobhan Fahey.)
We covered a wide range of topics but one that has kind of stuck with me is what Hillary Clinton tried to do to Barack Obama. She slammed her opponent with a Nevada mailing:
“Hillary Rodham Clinton is accusing rival Barack Obama of proposing a $1 trillion tax increase with a plan to require high income earners to pay more Social Security taxes.
Clinton outlines the charge, which she previously has made, in a mailing to voters ahead of Saturday’s presidential caucus.”
Obama said he would consider keeping the exemption for up to around $200,000, but anyone earning more than that should have to contribute more. He was not specific about what he would do.
“There might be some exemptions, but once people are making over $200,000 to $250,000, they can afford to pay a little more in payroll tax,” Obama said.
(That’s courtesy of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.)
In and of itself that would be fine but it turns out Hillary advocated the same thing in Iowa:
“Three months ago, Clinton told an Iowa voter privately that she would consider raising the income limit as long as there was a “gap,” with no Social Security taxes on income from $97,500 to around $200,000. An Associated Press reporter overheard the conversation.”
Why is Hillary Clinton being given a free pass for this? Why aren’t her supporters standing up and saying it’s hypocritical to try and get people to look negatively on your opponent when you said you would consider the same thing if you were elected?
I know how politics work but this is an example of why people who despise the Clintons and say that Hillary would be horrible for America find such easy rhetoric. This goes beyond typical political gamesmanship into flat out deception. It’s like a sorority slamming college athletes for drinking and hazing students while doing it themselves. It just doesn’t wash.
I find it hard to believe the Clintons can’t come up with something more than this. There has to be something Obama stands for that Hillary can stand against where she’s not in league with his thinking on the matter.
Anyway, thank you those who called, e-mailed, text messages and left comments this morning during the show. I had a great time and again thanks to Booms and Tom Ladd.
It’s hard to pin Obama down on the Social Security thing. At one point, he was advocating that everyone making over $92,000 should have a large increase in social security taxes, then it was $97,000, now it’s up to over $200,000. I haven’t seen the news story or the flier, but Obama’s plan is outlined on his website and has been outlined in interviews, so it’s hard to deny that that it is his plan to increase social security taxes, probably on peolple making over $97,000.
Hillary, on the other hand, supposedly told this to an Iowa voter in private, which was supposedly “overheard” by a reporter, and said she “might consider it.” Unless you have another example of her openly advocating this plan, I’m not sure you can compare her comment to Obama’s well-thought-out and openly discussed plan.
I think we can say that Obama “advocated” for it and Hillary did not.
People who despise the Clintons are like people who despise George Bush, in that they don’t wait around for a reason to despite them and jump on them. They just do it and there doesn’t really need to be a reason why.
“Hillary, on the other hand, supposedly told this to an Iowa voter in private, which was supposedly “overheard” by a reporter, and said she “might consider it.” Unless you have another example of her openly advocating this plan, I’m not sure you can compare her comment to Obama’s well-thought-out and openly discussed plan.”
Why are you so quick to dismiss something reported by the Associated Press as false? You seem to be very quick to dismiss negative things done by Hillary.
“People who despise the Clintons are like people who despise George Bush, in that they don’t wait around for a reason to despite them and jump on them. They just do it and there doesn’t really need to be a reason why.”
I agree with you on that. However, in this case, there is clear hypocrisy going on. Just because you don’t like the source of the information (which, by the way, I didn’t know the Associated Press was a bad news source) it doesn’t make it less true.