Questions Asked and Answered...

(The question posed here was posted after a fairly good article in the Chicago Sun-Times ... I decided to try to help un confuse the writer by answering below)
Question:
Please address these issues.I'll paraphrase the same question that Hillary Clinton asked her supporters. Is this about Obama being Black or Gov. Palin being a woman, or are there more substantive meat and potato issues here? If you are "pro choice" then Obama is your ticket. If you are "Pro Life" then McCain is your ticket. Now with that out of the way, what about health care, jobs, retirement, college for our children, etc? Whether it is a fetus, or child has been decided in Roe v. Wade. Each side has an opinion on that U.S.Supreme Court Ruling and I am quite sure that whoever wins this race will pack the court to deal with it. But on the meat and potato issues I AM CONFUSED. I am confused because a conservative is supposed to be "fiscally conservative", when out of our last four presidents, only the Democrat left office with a budget surplus. I AM CONFUSED becuase, as Gov. Palin so eloquently said last night, Republicans are for less government. However they just used billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out the private companies of Freddie Mac, Fannie May and Bear Stearns to prevent a recession of their making. I AM CONFUSED when Republicans say they have the answer for Americas problems when they have controlled the White House for the past eight years and Congress for the past seven, but the financial mess that we now have is due to the "Democrats", "welfare" and "the Liberal Press." I AM CONFUSED because Sen. McCain argues that Obama is unfit to be president because "he won't admit that the surge worked, but McCain voted for, what the great majority of Americans feel, was a un-necessary war. Please explain how the surge would have been necessary had we not gone to war?

Answer:
To: MRC ... Don't be confused, madame. I can help you. From the election sweep of 1994, the conservative sweep of congress effectively stopped the Clinton 's plans for making the U.S. a socialist country through the nationalized health care and massive tax increases that they had planned. They (Congress)reformed welfare and after vetoing it 3 times, Bill Clinton finally signed it and then took credit for it and the balanced budgets they produced, even though his whole life and philosophy opposed it.
It was congress that controlled and was responsible for budgets then and it is congress now. It is congress that deserves credit or blame for fiscal performance. Presidents can ask for good or bad policy, but if it gets done, it will be the controlling philosophy of the congress that does the deeds.
When the Republicans took over both houses of congress 2004, both they and the president began acting like Democrats with runaway spending. They are as guilty of poor performance then as the Dem's are now, and some of them even got caught in downright fraud, sex scandals, and corruption. They get thrown out when the Republicans catch them. Unlike the Democrats, we don't ignore corruption in our own house, IF WE KNOW.
Now, I don't know if the war to defend America is unpopular. I think it was necessary. It's not unpopular with me. I believe removing Saddam HELPED good people and HURT/hindered the plans of bad people.
It also staged our troops in the neighborhood where we needed to be able to deal with all the killers and bullies in the region ... you know, like Hezbollah, AlQeda, Hamas, the Government of Iran. They came here and attacked our civillians, our secretaries, and our children. When they decide to mix it up with us again, it won't be our weakest that they get to face. Our guys are now seasoned and ready, and able to protect us as long as they are not given two Democrat woosies as a Commander in chief.
I hope you are not confused any more.

More later!