Linkmeister

Ranting out loud

Scott is tired. Josh Marshall is alarmed. I am disgusted. I'm disgusted with the Democrats for having no cojones, but mostly I'm disgusted with the current occupant of the White House and his crowd of bullies. The litany of alliances and treaties they have done their best to destroy goes on and on; my country, led by this pack of fools, has become one of the most feared and disliked nations on the planet. Surely not even the 50,456,167 people who voted for GW Bush wanted or expected him to govern as though the world was his to trample on, yet that is precisely what he's done and continues to do.

Kyoto? Who cares whether the planet suffers? My contributors in the extractive industries got theirs. ABM treaty? Gotta take care of the aerospace and defense contractors. The UN? A debating society; who needs it? NATO? Outlived its usefulness, and besides, the French and Germans belong to it. American civil liberties? The damn people whine too much; let's spy on 'em and see who we can get the goods on; then we'll take away their citizenship. American forests, air and water? Hey, my industry buddies'll clean up after themselves; all I gotta do is ask. Oh, and about all those programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? All the people who get that help should have worked as hard as I did to get rich been born wealthy like me, then they wouldn't need it. Besides, those programs are BIG Government, and I don't like BIG Government, so if I can spend the country into a big enough hole, those programs will have to be cut way back. That'll please all my anti-tax buddies.

I keep reading statistics telling me that relatively few people have even $50K saved up for their retirement; I wonder how many of them are included in that 50 million people who voted for this. Do they still expect to collect Social Security as a supplement to their retirement income, or to have Medicare help pay for their parents' medical bills? As the deficit grows, they'd better not count on it. This is a train wreck, and we're all in the caboose.