I saw this diary earlier today which got me thinking about Disneyland/World and the need for something a little lighter on the day after the scales have fallen from so many eyes, the day after the ugly discovery that our idol has feet of clay...you get the idea. The bottom line is that Obama’s present stance on the FISA deal sucks. So now for something completely different, what is your favorite Disney ride and why. I will include EPCOT and California Adventure for the sake of this discussion though this may turn off some purists.
Just saw this on Juan Cole (the reporting is from Reuters and McClatchy), Turkey is invading Irag with between 3,000-10,000 troops to go after the PKK, aka Kurdish terrorists at least as far as Turkey is concerned. Sounds like heavy fighting is going on which could make a quick withdrawal difficult but it is hard to know how it will play out. The only thing for certain is that it is more bad news and the conflict has the potential to spiral out of control. And how can we blame the Turks for going after TERRORISTS, that's not going to sound right. We have painted ourselves into a corner and I do not see any easy way out of this mess. We can support our NATO ally, the Turks, and piss off the Iraqi Kurds, our main allies in Iraq, or vice versa. Clearly, the wheels are still coming off the slow motion train wreck that is Iraq. (Sorry for the short diary and I never thought I'd use the 'BREAKING' news bit but there it is.) Note: Title was updated to 'Slowly Breaking...'
Social Security is one program that clearly demonstrates the good that Government can do and should do. Which is why so many Repubs hate it and would like to turn it into a big cash cow for the financial industry. Beating back Bush’s privatization scheme after the 2004 election was a huge victory even if it was just a holding action. The old right wing canard of ‘social security won’t be there for me when I retire’ was briefly exposed for what it is, a big fat lie, but it seems that we keep forgetting that in strict accounting terms SS is in great shape. Currently there is a large SS surplus, the Reagan/Greenspan tax increase in 1983 to make SS solvent for the foreseeable future (i.e. through the baby boomers retirement) actually worked. However the SS surplus was borrowed by the government for other things, we can argue whether this was right or wrong but it was done. There was enough surplus money to secure SS for decades after SS starts running a current accounts deficit in about 10 years when the current FICA tax payments no longer cover all the benefits being paid out. More below...
As an infrequent poster but frequent lurker, I thought a break was needed from the overheated primary wars. BTW I am referring to blogs which are primarily political and/or media oriented. If you are interested in climate change research (RealClimate) or pushing back the evolution deniers (Talk Origins, Pandas Thumb) you will have your own favs, and Juan Cole is a must for understanding the latest Middle East developments, but for politics and the hash that the media makes of it, where do you find the best commentary on the internets? Of course I do not include DKos in the discussion, we are here and we post or lurk because this is an incredible resource for folks like us, seeking intelligent, reasoned and progressive perspectives on the issues of the day, nuff said. More below...
Call Bob Somerby `butter' because he is on a roll. The Daily Howler shreds Joe Klein's new book, rips Arianna and Maureen Dowd and the rest of the gang that helped torpedo Al Gore in 2000, but for whom now--magically--the scales have fallen from their eyes. Somerby may not be everyone's cup of tea, he has frequent bouts of monomania, his interpretation of the Plame affair was problematic at best, his desire to be evenhanded is sometimes wrongheaded, his taste in movies is questionable, and I certainly would not countenance his opinion of Colbert's performance at the Press Dinner. All that said, Somerby knows the 2000 campaign debacle backwards and forwards. He has read it all and explained, countless times, how the press screwed Gore royally in 2000. The fact that the media has collective amnesia over that episode is a serious problem. If the press cannot learn from history then they (and we) are doomed to repeat it. So how to change the future, how to alter the press script?
Bush was asked this question by an Iraqi reporter accompanying the Iraqi Prime Minister link. If a hand-picked reporter could ask such a damning question, you wonder what they really think. This question needs to be repeated over and over, in response to all the b.s. we get from the Repub spin machine on how many good things are being done over there and how many schools have been built. I mean this question was asked yesterday! The Iraqi people want to know--"When will you begin the reconstruction of Iraq?" We are in it deep and this simple and achingly innocent question utterly exposes the lies we have been fed. Spread the word.
The first hour of Talk of the Nation was devoted to "Was the War in Iraq Worth It?" I stopped listening to TOTN regularly when Juan Williams did his stint as moderator. Sadly, it has not improved. The first speaker was an `unbiased' military historian (he was okay), then the pro-war Max Boot (utterly disgusting tripe), and then the anti-war Prof. Meersheimer (sp? who did a pretty good job pointing out the insanity of it all). But for the introduction where it was mentioned that at least 16,000 Iraqis had died, there was essentially no further mention of the Iraqi dead.
Okay, everyone wants to talk framing, so here is Hagel wanting to boost the retirement age to 68 (for full benefits), we all know how the Repubs have distorted the life expectancy question so here is some turnabout, frame it like this--Hagel wants us to work for over 45 years to get less than 10 years worth of benefits (current life expectancy in the US is just under 78). I think that Joe Sixpack (myself included) will see that as a raw deal. In fact let's just call W's plan the Raw Deal versus FDRs New Deal. The truth is that most of the people who really need SS are not pencil pushers, they do jobs that are simply not done by people in their late 60's.
This has probably been said before but here it goes again. We boomers paid our fair share to Social Security. Alan Greenspan et al. jacked the FICA up in 1983 and we've been paying it for the last 21 years. The tax hike (yes that's right, as a bonus you get to talk about Reagan's tax HIKE and how he at least got one thing right) was necessary and that is why SS is in such good shape now. We did our part so don't mess with SS! I swear that if the Dems screw this one up then maybe we do need a new party.
Why is Bush Time's `Man of the Year'? Conventional wisdom is beginning to spout the idea that he won the election by being bold and forthright and connecting with the American people. Actually he ran the most negative, most smear-laden campaign in my memory, which goes (a little shakily) back to '68. There have been tough campaigns but the unrelenting negative ads were remarkable and I watch very little TV but even I saw them, apparently you couldn't not see them. Look at all the press the swift boat liars got for their ad buy--they couldn't buy that kind of coverage and they didn't have to. Look, at the time I thought Kerry was doing the right thing, playing Mr. Nice Guy, don't scare the people, show that you're presidential, that you have gravitas, that you will protect them. I did not like it but I thought `alright, don't piss off that mythical swing voter but pull him in by being respectful of the President, better not go for the jugular, too risky' but in the cold light of 20/20 hindsight I see that I was horribly wrong, taken in by the desire to win instead of the desire to do the right thing.
Apparently, Bush is once again going to promote the partial privatization of social security at the RNC convention as part of his on-going theme of an `ownership' society AP story . (Hey, if you have enough money you can even own a President, ain't our society great!)
In response to analysis a la Krugman that shows that this makes no fiscal sense, the Repugs will undoubtedly respond with the usual line of "this is your money" and point out that they are only referring to a `small percentage of social security' revenues (aka the camel's nose). But it seems to me that this argument should be answered by owning up to the fact that social security is a safety net for the folks who need it, those not savvy enough to play the market, unlucky enough to have invested in Enron or unfortunate enough to have their pension gutted by a company (or state govt.) that is going belly up. And besides, I know that this may come as a surprise to many, but you can already save your money for retirement, the only problem being that many of us cannot afford to. The point being that privatization of social security is really only going to help those who need it the least.
Of course, this pill will be sugar-coated in some manner and most likely will not be called privatization but be hidden in some euphemism, probably `social security ownership'. On the plus side, I really think privatization is a loser issue for the Repugs if the Dems can frame it properly, Reagan's big social security tax hike which was going to preserve social security for a 50 years and has actually succeeded in that (with the only drawback being that the tax is incredibly regressive) needs to used to beat Bush (and Greenspan) on the head. I am also at a loss as to why Kerry's credentials as a fiscal conservative--did you know that he was a big supporter of Gramm-Rudman, me neither--haven't been trotted out to date, I can only guess that they are saving some ammo for closer to the election but it seems time is getting a little short. My hope is that they know what they are doing, but if they cannot nail Bush on privatizing Social Security then I think the outlook will be bleak.
