Fox: Our Economy is Doomed if Obama Wins
Reported by Melanie - October 22, 2008 -
It was Obama's-gonna-wreck-the-country day today (October 22, 2008) on Your World w/Neil Cavuto, Fox's joke of a "business news" show. As for "fair and balanced?" Any pretense of that was out the window. You know, emergency times call for emergency measures.
With a shot of the "big board" on Wall Street present on the screen almost continuously for the hour, showing the Dow down 514.45 points, Cavuto paraded out a who's who of capitalist pigs who preached to the crowd about how we're going to hell in a hand basket if Obama wins. These guys are freaked out and that their robber baron days might be coming to an end.
Cavuto kicked it off at the top of the hour with a Fox News Alert and this intro: "Well, as Shep has been telling you, stocks hit hard, very hard as this wealth issue hits home, and almost every home. Welcome everybody. I'm Neil Cavuto. Stocks falling down, John McCain not letting up, accusing Barack Obama today of wanting to cap your wealth at a time the markets can't cap their selling. With the economy struggling, he says this would be the worst thing to do. Barack Obama firing back, saying that John McCain is not fighting for Joe the Plumber but for Joe the CEO."
After some talk about how markets around the world are suffering; some earnings reports and two field reports from two of Cavuto's belles, Cavuto introduced Brad Woodhouse, a senior adviser to the DNC: "You know, with the economy hurting, markets tumbling, John McCain is saying this is hardly the time to put limits on wealth. He says that is something that Barack Obama wants to do. Is he right? ... Brad, what do you make of that notion that what Barack Obama would want to do as president is maybe put a cap on how rich you can become, and maybe that's reverberating in these markets."
(Amazing, isn't it, that there are actually people out there who believe this crap?)
Woodhouse said he hated to say it but, "That's just crazy. I think most Americans by now have learned that John McCain will say literally anything to get elected." He then went on to explain the facts of Obama's proposals. At one point Cavuto interjected that people aren't "imagining things" when they think that Obama "doesn't seem to flip over rich people...it's not paranoid to say, if you're slightly well to do, this guy hates me."
Woodhouse was very good at explaining how the middle class "deserves some relief" but Cavuto kept hammering, saying that the sell off could be to "many who are of means" saying "hey, I've got a bulls eye on my you-know-what" so I'm "selling first and asking questions later."
After talk about who is to blame for this mess (Cavuto spends a lot of time talking about the last two years when supposedly Democrats had the power to make sweeping changes), Don Imus was on to talk about an interview he did with McCain this morning and about how he thinks he'd make a "great president." The next guest was Steve Forbes.
Forbes is, among other things, the co-chair of the McCain campaign but at no time was the audience told that. Yet he went on to say that electing Obama "means higher taxes. That means more unionization. That means more regulation. It's going to be tough for the economy to emerge from those kind of burdens. ... The fear is not only are taxes going to be going up, but also you're going to have this mass unionization with card check. You're going to have other regulations coming in - the fairness doctrine - shutting down free speech, and all this is adding to the uncertainty. ... The market is saying it's riddled with uncertainty. ... In short, everything's going to ride on the election. People are going to say, what is going to happen between now and January 20, and then after January 20."
(Now, don't you think knowing that Forbes is McCain's co-chair is relevant here? Fox didn't.)
Flash forward about six minutes and you have a woman named April Byrd, who is featured in a new John McCain ad. She is a small business owner, trying to "live out the American dream" but alas, Obama's trying to take that away from her: "We want to be encouraged for our hard work, and, in pursuing the American dream, and not necessarily penalized for it."
Next came Dave Ramsey who was on to talk about how to handle these big drops in the Dow but he quickly turned to Obama (surprise, surprise!): "I think the stock market is still factoring in not only the ridiculous economic climate that we're in that's very scary but it's still factoring in this presidential election. The stock market doesn't like regulation. It doesn't like higher taxes. It doesn't like health care crammed down its throat. And I still think we're seeing a bit of an Obama effect on this. ... When you've got a weak and struggling economy, you don't raise taxes ... that's Econ 101." You don't "kick in the knee" and throw in "some regulations too which will cost several tens of millions of dollars per company in legal fees." It's "out of control. I mean, Socialism really doesn't cause prosperity. It really doesn't."
And last but not least, Jack Kemp! John McCain has "tried to talk" about tax cuts but "of course, Barack Obama is talking about raising tax rates on capital gains and dividends and corporate income and personal income and payroll income and if anybody thinks that helps this market, ah, they have to be dreaming. ... This is serious stuff. We're headed for a profoundly deep recession. ... These are serious problems and I don't think a tax increase will work. ... This is global and it's not something that ah, a, raising tax rates and redistributing wealth, as Barack Obama wants to do, is going to help any." Kemp said he is going to Cleveland with McCain on Monday to talk about "lower tax rates on corporate income, lower tax rates and reform[ing] the tax code. It should be lower across the board and certainly we should eliminate the capital gains tax for say, five to ten years, not just suspend it for two years."
With that Cavuto signed off: "America's Election Headquarters is next. I have a feeling they'll be covering a lot of this too."
Comment: I'm sure they did.
