{"id":437,"date":"2008-10-29T05:38:37","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T05:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/10\/is-the-rest-of-the-world-so-mu.html"},"modified":"2008-10-29T05:38:37","modified_gmt":"2008-10-29T05:38:37","slug":"is-the-rest-of-the-world-so-mu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/10\/is-the-rest-of-the-world-so-mu.html","title":{"rendered":"Is the rest of the world so much smarter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

All over Europe people are overwhelmingly in support of one of our presidential candidate’s. Can you guess which one it is? Why is this such a no-brainer? If it is obvious to you who everyone else <\/em>in the world supports, why isn’t it obvious to half of America who we <\/em>should support???
\nI am in Paris as I write this, and I have been traveling all over Europe these past six weeks carrying the message of Conversations with God to audiences in England, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland and Denmark…and I can tell you that people here are desperately hoping that Barack Obama will become the next U.S. President.
\nI had lunch today with a professor in Paris who said he’d heard on French television this morning that a poll taken here yesterday showed that Obama had the support of 95% of respondents.
\nNinety-five percent.
\n<\/em>How can people all over the world (the majority of people in all but a handful of countries favor Obama) see something so clearly, see so plainly that Obama is the best choice for the world right now, while America apparently still remains so divided? Could it be because folks away from the U.S. are looking at issues, while so many of the folks at home are worried about “values” issues?
\nBut let’s look at this idea of raising taxes for people making more than $250,000 a year, while lowering taxes for the other 95% of Americans, as Sen. Obama wants to do. Some critics of this idea call it “socialism” and criticize it as “redistributing the weath.”
\nWell, let me ask you something. Did you know that in 1974 the highest paid executives in American made something like 20 times more than the workers they employed? And did you know that today they make 200<\/em> times more?
\nDid you know that?
\nIs there anything wrong with us creating taxing policies that no longer continue to favor the rich at the expense of the middle class and the poor? Does that seem so immoral and “un-American” to you?
\nIs there something wrong with us saying, “Hey, you big tycoons have made enough money off of the middle class and the poor by giving them easy-money loans that you knew they can never completely pay off because it cost so much to finance them.”
\nThose money people are no better than the old Company Store, to which the miners owed their soul. They’re no better than the pawn shops that pay a pittance for family heirlooms and personal treasures because they know the folks who carry them into the shop, lovingly wrapped in paper or soft cloth, need whatever money they can get, desperately.
\n“You hypcrites! You brood of vipers!” one man once said, long, long ago. I believe he was speaking alternatively of the Pharisees and to money-changers in the Temple.
\nAnd one more note…John McCain the other day defended Sarah Palin’s wardrobe purchases by the Republican National Committee by saying that Governor Palin was a woman of modest means and of modest lifestyle who did not know she was going to be thrust into the global spotlight in a national campaign. His implication: Of course it was appropriate for the RNC to make some wardrobe purchases for her.
\nAnd you know what? I would agree, if those purchases had been modest – or even immodest, but at least reasonable. Say, something like ten grand worth of clothing. Or, heck, even twenty grand. But one hundred and fifty thousand dollars???
\nI suppose to a man who has, by his own admission, 13 cars and 8 houses, that does not seem like a great deal for a few outfits to wear during the few weeks until the election day (the campaign says the plan all along was to contribute all of the clothes to a charity–unnamed–after the election), but to the average person….shall we say, to Joe Six Pack or Joe the Plumber, 150 C-notes seems like a lot of moola for mu-mu’s. I mean, people buy houses<\/em> with that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All over Europe people are overwhelmingly in support of one of our presidential candidate’s. Can you guess which one it is? Why is this such a no-brainer? If it is obvious to you who everyone else in the world supports, why isn’t it obvious to half of America who we should support??? I am in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nIs the rest of the world so much smarter? - Conversations with God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is the rest of the world so much smarter? - Conversations with God\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"All over Europe people are overwhelmingly in support of one of our presidential candidate’s. Can you guess which one it is? Why is this such a no-brainer? 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