Re: mystery solved

Daniel writes:

"I can picture now, a silhoutte on the horizon, a dramatic pose; the left
hand out stretched with a hammer the right raised overhead bearing the
sickle..."

Oh, Daniel. Surely you cannot be serious. After this piece of pitifully
irrelevant nostalgia, it's impossible to treat your post as anything other
than a joke.

(And if you've seen the old ad for Taylor Made ICW irons -- "The Next
Revolution" with a Soviet-style worker rising above a mass of fellow
proletarians, holding up an ICW three iron -- you'd know it wasn't even an
original joke.)

But here are a few less that responsible responses.

Yes, tax cuts for the very rich -- a sure way to relieve suffering and
economic hardship, if you believe in deficit fairies, trickle down trolls and
other such economic flights of fancy.

Yes, slashing education programs, entire programs, and redirecting monies
elsewhere in the Education department -- the amount now spent by the Federal
government on actually educating our children, after examining the current
Bush proposed budget closely, falls from even last year. And for every one
dollar that will actually go towards the education of students not in special
programs, four dollars will have been spent on Iraq (where the locals are
already on their way to establishing a new Islamic state, the last thing the
Bushies want in the region). Charming priorities and geo-political stupidity
all rolled up into one.

And you didn't a hear a word from me about Al Gore. He's every bit as bad as
the dufus we have. The last election in this country may have presented our
citizens with one of the worst, most meaningless choices in all of American
history.

And you cannot be seriously defending Star Wars. Not only does every
responsible scientist ever asked say that it doesn't work and has never shown
any signs of being able to work; the geo-political threat has changed so
completely that it is utterly anachronistic. If you bother to read, Daniel,
you'd know that it was never going to be able to stop the sort of missiles
we're talking about in Korea anyway. Why is anyone even discussing it, you
might ask? That's not hard. There's serious money in it for Raytheon and
Boeing and Lockheed-Martin (all of whom have members of the current
administration or their families on their boards) and I wouldn't be surprised
if Halliburton managed to get a taste, just for good measure. These are
self-serving, shameless men, Daniel, who are keeping alive a program that no
responsible thinker in any field or discipline has ever endorsed in any way,
all for the profits to be made on it. Read the White Paper put out by the
Space Defense agency a few years back and finally released to the public
against the agency's own desires. Even you'll be ashamed and embarrassed.

By the way, why are you so troubled by my car and my golfing? Neither has
anything to do with my politics.

And no, Daniel, I'm afraid children are not "the wedge of the shrill," they
are the future; and they are going to get stuck with one hell of a crippling
debt, with hatred and resentment abroad and a nasty fiscal crisis at home,
and a serious lack of services and jobs when the Bushies are done. But that's
to be predicted when you give the government over to guys who have the
long-term historical perspective of hummingbirds and who share the smug
self-righteousness of the saved and use it to direct their policy making.

There's nothing else in your post, as far as I can see, that says anything,
so I'll stop there and say this.

I began all of this with thoughts about the mess in Iraq. Let me be clear.

I'm arguing that the policy that this invasion was a part of, the policy of
"pre-emptive" first strikes that cause massive destruction in countries we
really want no part of owning, is a stupid and irresponsible one that in the
end only leads to more messes like the ones we created earlier that caused us
to have to "strike first" to begin with. I'm arguing that it's the cycle of
funding and supporting bastards then using military force to defeat the
bastards we supported only to create the proper conditions for the rise of
new bastards is a stupid, circular policy created by men with no long term
historical perspective and it's just the sort of policy of international
overextension abroad which eventually creates hate and resentment and which,
combined with fiscal irresponsibility at home (going from a budget surplus to
nearly a trillion dollars in debt in less than four years, for instance) has
historically proven to be just the sort of situation that has caused havoc
for great nations throughout history.

And, of course, I'm arguing that all this talk about "freedom" and "letting
the Iraqi people choose their own form of government" was just a rhetorical
smokescreen, an after-the-fact invocation, designed to divert the audience
from the real reason we were doing this and were going to do it ever since
9/11 -- simply to settle an old score with someone we once created and now
hated (again) and to protect Israel and our other allies in the region and as
a lesson to the world that if you are a small country without nukes and pose
no real threat to us militarily, we will not hesitate to strike first. This
was never really about giving the Iraqi people whatever government they want,
and we'll see that if they decide they want their own fundamentalist Islamic
state, because the Bushies aren't going to let mullahs run both Iraq and
Iran. Never.

But, finally, since we're on the subject, let's go the videotape, shall we?

Four years of Bush 1. Staggering deficits increasing at a historically
unprecedented rate, a charmingly abrupt recession, dramatic increases in
unemployment, a marked drop in all of the markets.

Eight years of Clinton. Budget surplus for the first time in decades, a move
out of recession and eight straight years of growth in GNP and all the LEIs,
dramatic rise in job creation, a boom in the market.

Three years of Bush 2. The return of staggering deficits, projected by the
OMB to reach record levels, the beginning of yet another charming recession,
the return of a rise in the unemployment numbers and a drop in the rate of
GNP increase and in the LEIs, a serious slowdown in the creation of new
jobs, and down goes Frazier (sorry, that should "down goes the market.")

But it's all a coincidence, right? Maybe the odd servicing by a willing
White House intern isn't such a bad idea. But who's going to want to do the
job now?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Voo-doo economics.... Indeed.

All the best,

--John

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Mon Apr 21 15:24:38 2003