John Edwards Is A Friggin….Well, You Know

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No idea why I am spending time on this yahoo, he has about the same chance of winning the nomination as Ron Paul does, so why do I spend my time writing about these nimrods?

Because it’s just so fun….

Here is Dapper Don telling us that we’re all fools for believing we are in a war against terrorism.  Wish someone would of told Osama that way back when:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a "global war on terror," calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.

In a defense policy speech he planned to deliver at the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards called the war on terror a "bumper sticker" slogan President George W. Bush has used to justify everything from abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad to the invasion of Iraq.

"We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes," Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery. "By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set — that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam."

In the first presidential debate last month in South Carolina, Edwards was one of four Democrats — including Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel — who said they did not believe there was a global "war on terror." Front-runners Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama indicated that they did.

Rudy had a few words for ole Dapper:

Meanwhile he continue to talk about poverty, charging $55,000 dollars to talk about poverty mind you, while getting some more wealth to add to his already considerable sum from the treasures of a sunken ship.

Nevermind his use of the tax code to save himself $600,000 in taxes that would of went to Medicaid.  Nevermind the fact that he now wants to raise our taxes to EXPAND Medicaid and make his Socialist dream of universal health care a reality.  Nevermind that he made all that money on junk science which has helped to raise our health insurance. 

Nevermind all that, he is a man of the people:

On the campaign trail today, the senator regularly describes himself as the son of a mill worker but rarely if ever notes that his father was part of management. “They weren’t quite as humble as Edwards makes it sound,” says Pat Smith of Robbins. “Wallace was a very important man at the mill. … They weren’t rich, but they weren’t struggling poor.”

“John was more middle class than most of us,” says Bill Garner, a high school friend and college roommate.

and:

“The Edwardses were solidly middle class” when Johnny was growing up, according to a four-part profile of the North Carolina senator in his home state’s most prestigious daily, the Raleigh News and Observer. It’s true that for a few years as a young man Edwards’ father worked on the floor of a Roger Milliken textile mill. But Edwards père (a lifelong Republican, like his reactionary boss) quickly climbed upward, becoming a monitor of worker productivity as a “time-study” man — which any labor organizer in the South will tell you is a polite term for a stoolie who spies on the proletarian mill hands to get them to speed up production for the same low wages. Daddy Edwards’ grassing got him promoted to supervisor, then to plant manager — and he finally resigned to start his own business as a consultant to the textile industry.

THIS is the man who has the gall to tell us silly people that there is really no such thing as a war on terror.  Even tho he pledged his support in fighting that war….

There are many many hypocrites inside the Democrat party, but this guy has to be on top of the heap.

UPDATE

Even more bad news for Dapper Don and his Impending Doom Show: (whole article below due to the link requiring a subscription)

It’s been a rough week for John Edwards, and now comes more bad news for his "two Americas" campaign theme. A new study by the Congressional Budget Office says the poor have been getting less poor. On average, CBO found that low-wage households with children had incomes after inflation that were more than one-third higher in 2005 than in 1991.

The CBO results don’t fit the prevailing media stereotype of the U.S. economy as a richer take all affair — which may explain why you haven’t read about them. Among all families with children, the poorest fifth had the fastest overall earnings growth over the 15 years measured. (See the nearby chart.) The poorest even had higher earnings growth than the richest 20%. The earnings of these poor households are about 80% higher today than in the early 1990s.

What happened? CBO says the main causes of this low-income earnings surge have been a combination of welfare reform, expansion of the earned income tax credit and wage gains from a tight labor market, especially in the late stages of the 1990s expansion. Though cash welfare fell as a share of overall income (which includes government benefits), earnings from work climbed sharply as the 1996 welfare reform pushed at least one family breadwinner into the job market.

Earnings growth tapered off as the economy slowed in the early part of this decade, but earnings for low-income families have still nearly doubled in the years since welfare reform became law. Some two million welfare mothers have left the dole for jobs since the mid-1990s. Far from being a disaster for the poor, as most on the left claimed when it was debated, welfare reform has proven to be a boon.

The report also rebuts the claim, fashionable in some precincts on CNN, that the middle class is losing ground. The median family with children saw an 18% rise in earnings from the early 1990s through 2005. That’s $8,500 more purchasing power after inflation. The wealthiest fifth made a 55% gain in earnings, but the key point is that every class saw significant gains in income.

There’s a lot of income mobility in America, so comparing poor families today with the poor families of 10 years ago can be misleading because they’re not the same families. Every year hundreds of thousands of new immigrants and the young enter the workforce at "poor" income levels. But the CBO study found that, with the exception of chronically poor families who have no breadwinner, low-income job holders are climbing the income ladder.

When CBO examined surveys of the same poor families over a two year period, 2001-2003, it found that "the average income for those households increased by nearly 45%." That’s especially impressive considering that those were two of the weakest years for economic growth across the 15 years of the larger study.

One argument was whether welfare reform would help or hurt households headed by women. Well, CBO finds that female-headed poor households saw their incomes double from 1991 to 2005, and the percentage of that income coming from a paycheck rose to more than a half from one-third. The percentage coming from traditional cash welfare fell to 7% from 42%. Poor households get more money from the earned income tax credit, but the advantage of that income-supplement program is that recipients have to work to get the benefit.

The poor took an earnings dip when the economy went into recession at the end of the Clinton era, but data from other government reports indicate that incomes are again starting to rise faster than inflation as labor markets tighten and the current economic expansion rolls forward.

It’s probably asking way too much for this dose of economic reality to slow down the class envy lobby in Washington. But it’s worth a try.

Two America’s indeed.

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Is Edwards trying to be the Ron Paul of the Democrat Party?

Edwards…the only candidate in the 2004 race who consistently won every single primary and caucus where independents, RINOs, and Republicans were allowed to vote. In every single one, he carried moderate Americans. Had Kerry been bailed out by Kennedy money and arm twisting, Edwards would have swept the primarys etc middle of the season to the end. Why? Because back then he appealed to Americans-not just Democrats. Today, he’s full on pandering, and he has to if he wants to win the nomination. The Democratic Party is uber-polarized, and he has to pander to get money from those who are way off in la la land. If he doesn’t, come Feb 5, he’s gone.

The real question is, will Hillary’s money and back door arm twisters carry the day on 2/5 or will Obama’s empty zeal and amazing speaking ability crush Hillary’s? Yet further, on 2/5, there will not just be Democrats in primaries etc. Republicans and independents-America as a whole-will have the choice of who to vote for, and if Fred Thompson comes into the race in July as expected, he will crush all. Republican base loves him. His speaking ability and knowledge and experience crush Hillary and Obama’s, and if some of the minor Republican candidates fold before 2/5…he’ll have the staff too (he’s already got a fairly adept one).

Edwards is politically doa. This is it for him, he’s desperate, and he knows it.

I can’t wait to see how it goes 2/5. Not only will we see which dem and which rep carried each state, we’ll see which party carried each state, and how well each nominee did in each state. That’s the Democrats’ catch 22. They have to pander to the base to get the nomination, but they also have to focus on the national because a lot of people can vote for the other party in 08. I just don’t see NASCAR dads ooooing and ahhhhing to get to the polls for Sen Edwards. In just 7 months, we’re gonna have a real good idea who the next President will be-not just the nominees, but the next president.

You may want to read the following. You’re being conned by the WSJ editorial page. Again.

TODAY’S WSJ LEGERDEMAIN:

Judd Gregg (R-NH) requested that the Congressional Budget Office prepare a study measuring how low-income households with children have fared from 1991 to 2005. CBO dutifully complied, and found that low-income households with children have seen their income rise 35% over this period. The result is trumpeted in a lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal. The poor get richer! shouts the Journal. There are the predictable sneers at John Edwards for his insistent belief that there are poor people in the United States, and demands that the “class envy lobby” accept “this dose of economic reality.”

But wait. Why fifteen years? Well, it is a nice, round number. But fifteen years (from the last year where data) is available is 1991. That was a recession year, when incomes for this group collapsed. So the CBO study that Gregg demanded measures the change from a recession year to a boom year. Incomes for the poor — or anybody — always rise over the course of a business cycle. The measurement Gregg demanded is simply useless.

If you look closely at the study, you find that all the low-income growth occurred in the 1990s — more than all, in fact. It peaked in 2000, and has fallen since. One table in the study shows that low-income households with children had their income drop more than 10% from 2000 to 2005. You could take that point and argue that the Bush administration has made the poor poorer. That wouldn’t be a fair argument– Bush didn’t cause the 2001 recession — but it would be much fairer than the point Gregg and the Journal are making.

The interesting question is whether, by the time the current business cycle hits its peak, incomes for people at the bottom will recover to where they were at the peak of the last business cycle. As of 2005 they still haven’t caught up.

–Jonathan Chait

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