Sunday, February 27, 2005

Private investing, Bush go way back

Private investing and G. W. Bush go way back.

So do these ultra-right think tanks that still think FDR was a Communist, it seems.

Look, you are supposed to save for your retirement already. What nincompoop thinks Social Security is supposed to be all they have waiting for them when they get the gold watch and the boot?

Social Security is supposed to be the emergency funding there to keep you alive if your savings and investments go belly up, as almost everyone's did (through no fault of their own) in the 1930s.

If Bush wants to subsidize people to save money for their retirement, I have no problem (other than the fact that it might increase the deficit, but the real culprit there is his tax cuts.)

When he talks about putting part of the payroll tax into the stock market or other risky investments, he just means doing away with the Social Security program, an emergency backstop for the poor.

Bush may not understand it, but the New Deal saved capitalism. Do away with it and you will have very serious economic, and political, problems again.

Saddam Hussein's half-brother is captured (So?)

Saddam Hussein's HALF-BROTHER is captured?!?!?! Who gives a fried flip, or why should anyone? Those guys didn't attack the US of A. Usama bin Ladin did. That &%$#! bastard bin Ladin is going to die of old age before Bush gets him.

Moral: It's safer to attack the United States these days than to cross the Bush family. Togo is up in arms because the president's son succeeded him. Where is the American outrage about the Bush baby president? How could that guy be re-elected after blowing the war that badly?

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Where is the outrage?!?! Where is the impeachment?

This administration is so determined to make short term profits for its investors (voters? we buy those as inputs) it doesn't mind destroying the United States to do it. These people are clearly guilty of "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Monday, February 21, 2005

So Hunter S. Thompson ends like this?

IHunter's death calls Hamlet to my mind. "Oh, that the Almighty had not raised his canons against self-slaughter!". Hunter didn't believe in the Almighty, of course, so he took his own way out.

I've always believed God in his mercy spared John Lennon and Dorothy Day the Reagan years. I'm sorry Hunter didn't have the strength to live through the second Bush administration. America could have used him. I don't know, but I don't think he was meant to die now.

Sunday, February 20, 2005

"U.S. Officials Say a Theocratic Iraq Is Unlikely"

"U.S. Officials Say a Theocratic Iraq Is Unlikely"?!?!?!?!?


Aren't these the same guys who said we would be welcomed with flowers, that the occupation would be as peaceful as the occupation of Japan, that we wouldn't need 200,000 troops, that it was all over when the Iraqi army disappeared, or when Saddam was captured, or when . . . (the latest terminus is the elections).


It seems to me that a theocratic Iraq is the best the US can hope for, with an Iraqi Civil War more likely.


Think about that, what was our worst nightmare a few years ago, what we backed Saddam Hussein against Iran to prevent, has now become the best we can hope for. And the US administration that turned it around for us that fast has just been re-elected by the American people.


For the record, I do not think the majority of the American people are either stupid or evil. I do think, knowing so many of them as I do, that they are shockingly ignorant of the world beyond their shores, if not their borders. In many cases they don't even know other parts of their own country very well.


Richard Nixon once argued for continuing the Vietnam War lest the US turn into a "pitiful, helpless giant." It is frightening to contemplate that the giant has become pitiful and helpless because it is blind, lashing out in post 9/11 anger at the wrong targets, turning friends into enemies, and neutrals into foes.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Sunni regime?

Is no one else bothered by the way the media constantly portrays Saddam's regime as "Sunni dominated"? It was a secular regime with even Christians in the cabinet. Shi'ites were, on average, worse off because they had ben out of favor under the Ottomans for long centuries, and there was no affirmative action for them. Is that too complicated for the press to explain, or is bringing up affirmative action in a positive light politically incorrect now?