I thought you said you quit?


"willfish" wrote in message
lkaboutboats.com...
In 1978, when he was running for the House of Representatives, George Bush
told a reporter that Social Security would go broke within 10 years.

He was wrong. It went "broke" in four years.

Bush's proposed cure for a broken Social Security system then was what it
is now: Take money out of the system and put it into private accounts. It
was as strange an idea then as it is now.

(For the record, Bush lost his 1978 bid to represent Texas' 19th
Congressional District.)

In 1982, a mere four years after Bush got sent packing, the Social
Security Trust Fund was "nearly depleted," according to the Social
Security Web site.

But: "No beneficiary was shortchanged because the Congress enacted
temporary emergency legislation that permitted borrowing from other
Federal trust funds and then, later, enacted legislation to strengthen ...
Fund financing. The borrowed amounts were repaid with interest within four
years."

System broke, system fixed. Just like that. Dang! That meant Bush would
have to wait till he was a second-term president before anyone would
listen to his "sky is falling" alarmism again.

In a way, I sympathize with the president. His Big Brother scheme to
coerce people into investing and thus become responsible for their own
retirement income, seems like a good mix of hardnosed capitalism and
idealistic socialism enforced by Big Government.

If it were practical, I'd be all for it. But it isn't.

Its big problem is it requires us to rob Peter to pay Paul. The system is,
without a doubt, looking at a shortfall some time in the future, and yet
Bush seeks to fix it by taking money out of it, handing that money over to
young investors to invest only as the government sees fit, and then
borrowing to make up the shortfall?

Our president is somewhat of a Pollyanna.

That's part of his charm. You could see that when he nominated a
Spanish-surnamed man to become our next attorney general. In video of the
two of them together, you could see Bush just bursting with pride that he
had promoted the very European-looking Alberto Gonzalez to become
America's new Grand Inquisitor ... uh, attorney general.

Gonzalez has been accused of advocating, or at least condoning, torture of
"war on terror" prisoners. Whatever the truth of the matter, he botched
the job of advising the president on the treatment of prisoners. Here's
what he should have written:

"The United States of America will tolerate no mistreatment of its
prisoners whatsoever, nor will it turn over its prisoners to third parties
who mistreat prisoners."

Period.

(Is there anything more cowardly than torturing a person who has no way to
resist or fight back?)

If democracy and freedom are "on the move," as Bush claims, then we should
be leading the charge, not demeaning ourselves by sponsoring or condoning
medieval regressions.

And, incidentally, if you look at a list of countries new to democracy,
ask yourself how many of those countries were aided by the U.S. and how
many by ... Russia! A bit ironic, don't you think?

One wonders what the idealistic Bush was thinking when he nominated John
Negroponte to become director of national intelligence, a new job in our
ever-expanding federal government.

Negroponte has some fine qualities, to be sure. He's experienced and
competent and would probably look good in a uniform topped by a service
cap with a shiny black visor. But his background indicates he's either
completely unburdened by anything resembling moral principles or he's
dumber than a Toledo mud hen, take your pick.

Is this the guy we want overseeing the FBI (along with 14 other federal
intelligence agencies)?

The darkest part of Negroponte's history, in brief, was his activity when
he was U.S. ambassador to Honduras, during the Reagan administration.

At that time, according to numerous published reports, he falsified State
Department human rights reports, overlooking the so-called "death squads"
organized and led by the CIA. Christian missionaries and other opponents
of the existing Honduran regime were murdered by the CIA-trained Honduran
Battalion 3-16, according to news reports.

If this is so, and it appears to be, Negroponte is either the Scarecrow or
the Tin Man, lacking either a brain or a heart.

Is America so impoverished of talent, one wonders, that our president has
to nominate seriously tarnished men to hold some of our most important
positions?

There often seems to be something seriously wrong with Bush's thinking
process. The most startling example of that was his brusk rejection, early
in his first term, of the Kyoto agreements to reduce global warming. Those
accords went into effect last week, with the world's greatest single
polluter, the United States of America, conspicuously absent.

In fairness to Bush, the U.S. Senate rejected the Kyoto pact by a 95-0
vote during the Clinton administration. The reasoning? Reducing
climate-changing emissions might be bad for business.

And the excuse: Developing countries, like China and India, are not held
to the same strict standards as the industrial giants.

However flawed as it might be, the Kyoto process, approved by 140 nations,
is a start.

It is quite possible that at some point man-made global warming will reach
the point of no return. If we wait too long to combat it, we may never be
able to overcome it.

And, interestingly, the most dire predictions made so far have almost all
turned out to be too conservative. The destruction of our planet is
proceeding faster than most scientists ever expected.

In the 20th century, global temperatures rose more than one degree
Fahrenheit. That doesn't seem like much, but it already has had a
significant effect. In the 21st century, temperatures are expected to rise
at least 4 degrees and perhaps as much as 10 degrees.

Global warming appears to be a far more serious problem than international
terrorism, yet Bush ignores it.

When it comes to Social Security, easily repaired, Bush is Chicken Little.
When it comes to global warming, a far greater threat to our nation and
the planet, Bush becomes Pollyanna.

Bush may be the nice man his fans give him credit for being, but his
judgment seems seriously impaired. Why clear-thinking Republicans are so
tolerant of his missteps is another of life's mysteries.