Sunday, June 20, 2004
The Bush Administration Ostrich Defense
It seems the Bush administration's defense of a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq boils down to playground politics. (See here)
It might be time for the press to check and see if Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are wearing ruby slippers. You know, they close their eyes, click their heels together three times and chant, "there was a connection, there was a connection, there was a connection..." Poof! A connection miraculously appears.
It's getting to the point that the Bush admininistration needs to come forward and admit it had bad intelligence and they goofed, or they should just drop the act and work on creating a credible solution to the Iraq mess they made.
Using their logic and reasoning, it could be said that the US was behind the 9/11 attack. After all, we trained bin Laden and his cohorts in the Afghan/Soviet war. Heck, the CIA was involved in that. Granted it was almost 25 years ago, but who's really counting?
I mean, 20 years ago, the Reagan administration was chummy with Saddam, and Ol' Rumsfeld was shaking hands with the guy.(See Here) And the Bush I, and Reagan regimes didn't raise too much of a stink when Saddam was gassing his own people during the Iran/Iraq war. Check out Time magazine during the mid to late 80's. Saddam was regarded much more favorably than today.
What really puzzles me, and many others I'd imagine, is how people continue to blindly support this administration and its tower of lies and deceit. They make the Nixon administration look like the poster boys of good government. The Bushistas say one thing, and do the opposite. They change directions so often its difficult for those of us paying attention to keep up with these jokers.
For example, Take their recent tv ads. The ads claim there have been over 1 million new jobs created since last August. Let's see August of '03 minus June of '04... that comes to about 11 months or so. Hmm... that's about 91,000 new jobs a month for a year. If I recall, those figures don't sound right. It seems the economy has had a slight uptick the past couple months, but it could turn on a dime at any moment. To keep pace, I think they need to create about 300,000 new jobs a month at least. I'll have to check on that.
I can see why Mr. Bush proclaimed he's optimistic about America's future in the ad. He's rich and well connected. If the economy totally collapsed tomorrow, you can see that he'd still be riding in limos, riding in private jets, and so forth even if there were tens of millions of people begging for food in the streets. And those tax cuts he passed, they help guys like Bush, Cheney, and other billionaires who've had a real difficult time getting by the past 20 or so years.
In the Banana Republics of Latin America, the dictators really don't feel the pinch of poverty. Bush's "optimism" in my opinion, is his indifference to the 90% of us that work for a living. I'll agree that pessimism never created a job, but ignoring reality is probably the reason Mr. Bush was never a successful CEO of any of the companies he ran into the ground. El Presidente Bush was well connected. It helps when your dad is president, and shares the same last name as you, and many want to get to him by helping you. It works. Bush got help from Cheney and his Saudi chums. (talk about a connection between Al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, there's a lot of evidence to prove that.)
As for Kerry talking about the Depression, he's not too far off the mark. Líder Supremo Bush has created massive debt and deficits while in office. American jobs are going overseas at record speed. The federal debt drags the dollar down and increases the euro's value. His administration shows indifference to the shenanigans of corporate America, the decrease in wages, and the quality of jobs that are being created. (Federal minimum wage is still $5.15/hr. (Try paying $460 a month in rent on that and finding a way to pay the other bills you have. God help you if you have children on a salary like that.) Also, fewer Americans getting health care in their new jobs. This creates the risk and problem of strapping individuals with a heavy financial burden if anyone in their family gets sick. The DOW that has been sluggish the past 3 1/2 years. I could go on with this list, but Kerry's remark was in regard to the job creation in the US today hasn't been this bad since the Great Depression. Way to take his words out of context, Dubya.
Talk about class warfare. Bush II is showing the same out of touchness his dad showed about the plight of the average American. You could say its all a bunch of liberal nonsense and hooey, but facts are facts regardless if they come from an angel or demon.
So, to keep with the theme of my blog so far, it's time to boot Bush out of office. That's the most positive step to America's recovery. As they say in those twelve step programs, the first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem. America does, it's George Bush. Denying reality causes addicts to keep lying to themselves about their problems. The Bush administration keeps denying reality and blaming others for their problems. Again, a classic sign of an addict.
America doesn't need or deserve this kind of bullsh*t right now. We deserve better than this. It's time for change, and real leadership.
Register to vote, and work to boot this butthead out of office in November. Our future as freedom loving Americans depends on it.
It seems the Bush administration's defense of a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq boils down to playground politics. (See here)
"Did so."
"Did not."
"Did so."
"Did not."
"Did so."
"Did not."
(repeat about 100 times...)
It might be time for the press to check and see if Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are wearing ruby slippers. You know, they close their eyes, click their heels together three times and chant, "there was a connection, there was a connection, there was a connection..." Poof! A connection miraculously appears.
It's getting to the point that the Bush admininistration needs to come forward and admit it had bad intelligence and they goofed, or they should just drop the act and work on creating a credible solution to the Iraq mess they made.
Using their logic and reasoning, it could be said that the US was behind the 9/11 attack. After all, we trained bin Laden and his cohorts in the Afghan/Soviet war. Heck, the CIA was involved in that. Granted it was almost 25 years ago, but who's really counting?
I mean, 20 years ago, the Reagan administration was chummy with Saddam, and Ol' Rumsfeld was shaking hands with the guy.(See Here) And the Bush I, and Reagan regimes didn't raise too much of a stink when Saddam was gassing his own people during the Iran/Iraq war. Check out Time magazine during the mid to late 80's. Saddam was regarded much more favorably than today.
What really puzzles me, and many others I'd imagine, is how people continue to blindly support this administration and its tower of lies and deceit. They make the Nixon administration look like the poster boys of good government. The Bushistas say one thing, and do the opposite. They change directions so often its difficult for those of us paying attention to keep up with these jokers.
For example, Take their recent tv ads. The ads claim there have been over 1 million new jobs created since last August. Let's see August of '03 minus June of '04... that comes to about 11 months or so. Hmm... that's about 91,000 new jobs a month for a year. If I recall, those figures don't sound right. It seems the economy has had a slight uptick the past couple months, but it could turn on a dime at any moment. To keep pace, I think they need to create about 300,000 new jobs a month at least. I'll have to check on that.
I can see why Mr. Bush proclaimed he's optimistic about America's future in the ad. He's rich and well connected. If the economy totally collapsed tomorrow, you can see that he'd still be riding in limos, riding in private jets, and so forth even if there were tens of millions of people begging for food in the streets. And those tax cuts he passed, they help guys like Bush, Cheney, and other billionaires who've had a real difficult time getting by the past 20 or so years.
In the Banana Republics of Latin America, the dictators really don't feel the pinch of poverty. Bush's "optimism" in my opinion, is his indifference to the 90% of us that work for a living. I'll agree that pessimism never created a job, but ignoring reality is probably the reason Mr. Bush was never a successful CEO of any of the companies he ran into the ground. El Presidente Bush was well connected. It helps when your dad is president, and shares the same last name as you, and many want to get to him by helping you. It works. Bush got help from Cheney and his Saudi chums. (talk about a connection between Al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, there's a lot of evidence to prove that.)
As for Kerry talking about the Depression, he's not too far off the mark. Líder Supremo Bush has created massive debt and deficits while in office. American jobs are going overseas at record speed. The federal debt drags the dollar down and increases the euro's value. His administration shows indifference to the shenanigans of corporate America, the decrease in wages, and the quality of jobs that are being created. (Federal minimum wage is still $5.15/hr. (Try paying $460 a month in rent on that and finding a way to pay the other bills you have. God help you if you have children on a salary like that.) Also, fewer Americans getting health care in their new jobs. This creates the risk and problem of strapping individuals with a heavy financial burden if anyone in their family gets sick. The DOW that has been sluggish the past 3 1/2 years. I could go on with this list, but Kerry's remark was in regard to the job creation in the US today hasn't been this bad since the Great Depression. Way to take his words out of context, Dubya.
Talk about class warfare. Bush II is showing the same out of touchness his dad showed about the plight of the average American. You could say its all a bunch of liberal nonsense and hooey, but facts are facts regardless if they come from an angel or demon.
So, to keep with the theme of my blog so far, it's time to boot Bush out of office. That's the most positive step to America's recovery. As they say in those twelve step programs, the first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem. America does, it's George Bush. Denying reality causes addicts to keep lying to themselves about their problems. The Bush administration keeps denying reality and blaming others for their problems. Again, a classic sign of an addict.
America doesn't need or deserve this kind of bullsh*t right now. We deserve better than this. It's time for change, and real leadership.
Register to vote, and work to boot this butthead out of office in November. Our future as freedom loving Americans depends on it.
Sunday, June 13, 2004
The Empire Strikes Out: Reagan's Star Wars legacy
In regard to the policies of Reagan vs. Bush: The current Bush administration is to the Reagan administration as the new Star Wars trilogy is to the old/classic trilogy, without any of the cool special effects. The technology's better, but the story and characters are weaker. (With apologies to George Lucas and the vast throng's to Star Wars fans.)
There's this mythic idea that Reagan's defense spending crippled and destroyed the Soviet Union. Not true.
See, the USSR had internal corruption, a bad domestic policy, pursued weapons/military spending over domestic infrastructure spending. Now if you add a costly war to that equation, you put the USSR in a bad spot, probably to the breaking point. That was the thinking of Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. (Who has a name like a Star Wars character.)
See, Zbiggy and Carter cooked up a plan to hurt the USSR; trigger a costly war to the Soviets like the one that the US engaged in. Give them commies a Vietnam. I'm not certain of the specifics and details, but essentially the US helped trigger a war between the Soviets and the Afghans. The US helped train the mujahadeen, which become Reagan's "freedom fighters," and were even honored at the beginning of the film Rambo III. One of those guys was Osama bin Laden.
I've included an excerpt from an article by Steve Weissman at truthout.org here:
Star Wars Episode 0: The Phantom Defense
Now, I'll add an anecdotal bit about Reagan's Star Wars/SDI. In college I had a course on the physics of light, lasers, and SDI. It was during the end of the Cold War that I took this course.
Light has a lot of interesting and fundamental properties. It has a variety of wavelengths that range from the visible spectrum to invisible spectrums like ultraviolet, infrared, x-rays, gamma-rays and so on. Now, a laser is a super concentrated beam of light. You could build a laser powerful enough to cut through steel. DARPA is working on building anti-aircraft lasers and anti-personnel lasers as we speak.
The idea of SDI was to put a bunch of anti-missile satellites in orbit that would fire lasers to blast missiles in flight. If you were to look up the definition of boondoggle, you might see a picture of Reagan's SDI. The technological hurdles needed to build an orbital ABM (ABM = anti ballistic missile) system would be phenomenal and costly. It makes sense that Reagan proposed it considering he and Nancy consulted with astrologers, but I digress.
Let's say you build a tracking system that can accurately track ICBM's coming to attack the US. Great! Now, how do you stop the missiles? Fire lasers at them. Lasers (light) moves thousands of times faster than missiles, so hitting them would be a piece of cake. Here comes a few hurdles. You're tracking a missile, your satellite fires a laser at the missile, the missile should be destroyed right? Well, not so fast there...
Light, including lasers, have this characteristic of nature called diffraction. You see this effect perfectly when you use a flashlight at night. In other words, light scatters as it travels. Think shotgun blast. You have a central starting point, when you pull the trigger, all the pellets scatter/spray.
OK, so what? lasers are super concentrated light, right? Yes, but even over a distance, light diffracts. Lasers are concentrated light waves, so they'll diffract over space and time. You have to do one of two things, create a really tight focused beam to overcome diffraction, or get those satellites really close to an oncoming missile. I won't even bring up atmospheric interference.
Say you overcome that technological problem. You have your system for tracking and firing a laser. Now you'll have to create a power supply to power the lasers. Hmm... you're in space, you could use the sun's solar energy to power them. Well, you'd have to build a solar collector for each ABM satellite that's enormous which would be problematic for stealth reasons. You could use nuclear reactors to power them. Good idea, what happens if you detonate one of these reactors in orbit? What happens if you detonate hundreds of them in orbit? Where does the radiation and nuclear material go? Back home to earth.
Let's say you figure a way around the power problem. Now your enemy is going to want to hit you with their nuclear missiles. They didn't spend billions and billions of dollars just for kicks. They will devise strategies to dupe your ABM system. So, they'll do one of few things. They'll build a multi-warhead missile that will deploy multiple warheads once in flight. That means, one warhead will be the nuclear warhead, tens if not hundreds will be decoy warheads. How would an ABM be able to determine a real warhead from a decoy, or decoys, as it hurtles toward the US at about 17,000 mph? Your enemy probably isn't going to launch just one multiple warhead missile at a time either. Next, your enemy isn't going to let you know which missiles are dummies either. Say they launch about 10,000 ICBM's at the US. 2,000 of which are multi-warhead missiles. You better hope you have enough satellites in orbit to hit them all. Also, You'd have about 30 minutes to knock all of them out of the sky. You'd have to build tens of thousands of killer ABM satellites to even have a prayer.
Lastly, say you overcome all those technological hurdles. (Which would be a miracle of science.) Suppose your enemy plants a group of terrorists around the world. Each of them has a briefcase nuke. Your multi-trillion dollar ABM system will be useless to stop them. In fact, all you'd need is a handful of crazy guys that are willing to commit suicide rushing at nuclear reactors. Worse, give those crazed terrorists shoulder launcher missiles to fire at a nuclear power plant. (Scenarios like this make me lose some sleep at night when I think of them.) Again, your multi-trillion dollar ABM system flies quietly in orbit as America becomes irradiated.
Now, consider this... President Bush has begun implementing a faulty ABM system using untold millions (billions?) of our tax dollars. Think about the anti-ABM measures I mentioned. Even if you have planes/satellites/missiles flying around the world ready to bomb people to smithereens, how would they stop a handful of dedicated suicidal terrorists? Billions of our tax dollars will be pissed away on this boondoggle. (The financials are hard to determine, since Bush and DOD have stifled any information about his the ABM system.)
We could use that money to create the world's most efficient anti-terrorist force in the world, or for health care for those that don't have it, fund schools, libraries, colleges, improve infrastructure, improve things domestically here at home, invest it in entrepreneurial programs for small businesses and start-ups to help grow the economy, build a space station on the moon. Whatever. The point being is that billions of dollars will be wasted on a system that will not work.
SDI (Star Wars) and Bush's land based ABM system are clear signs that Americans are scientifically illiterate. We could have used those wasted billions to improve scientific education in our country, but instead we wasted it on something that made us feel comfortable. I'd say that's a sign of a major problem.
Finally, You could say "well at least Reagan's tax cuts helped fix the economy." To add insult to injury, the so called "Reagan Boom" was triggered by a Carter appointee, Paul Volcker. Furthermore, Reagan eventually raised taxes. Thirdly, he tripled the federal debt with pork barrel spending, strapping future generations with a huge debt. We could have used some of those wasted billions on economic education too.
In regard to the policies of Reagan vs. Bush: The current Bush administration is to the Reagan administration as the new Star Wars trilogy is to the old/classic trilogy, without any of the cool special effects. The technology's better, but the story and characters are weaker. (With apologies to George Lucas and the vast throng's to Star Wars fans.)
There's this mythic idea that Reagan's defense spending crippled and destroyed the Soviet Union. Not true.
See, the USSR had internal corruption, a bad domestic policy, pursued weapons/military spending over domestic infrastructure spending. Now if you add a costly war to that equation, you put the USSR in a bad spot, probably to the breaking point. That was the thinking of Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. (Who has a name like a Star Wars character.)
See, Zbiggy and Carter cooked up a plan to hurt the USSR; trigger a costly war to the Soviets like the one that the US engaged in. Give them commies a Vietnam. I'm not certain of the specifics and details, but essentially the US helped trigger a war between the Soviets and the Afghans. The US helped train the mujahadeen, which become Reagan's "freedom fighters," and were even honored at the beginning of the film Rambo III. One of those guys was Osama bin Laden.
I've included an excerpt from an article by Steve Weissman at truthout.org here:
As the story goes, Mr. Reagan's strategy went far beyond the military. By vastly escalating the economic costs of competing with the United States, he would force the Soviets to back down without our ever having to fire the first nuclear missile. When their new leader Mikhail Gorbachev cried Uncle, Mr. Reagan warmly welcomed him to the negotiating table, while patiently waiting for the mortally wounded Soviet Empire to give up the ghost.
It's a wonderful story, which historians will continue to debate in every nuance for decades to come. But three glaring holes stand out.
First, the more scholars learn about the former Soviet Union, the more clearly they see how it collapsed primarily from its own internal flaws. These included, among others, a wretched economy, growing weakness in high-tech, systematic corruption, a glaring imbalance between spending on guns and butter, an increasingly unsatisfied middle class, a failure ever to win the loyalty of its Eastern European satellites, and a tired ideology that no longer commanded allegiance, even among the ruling elites.
Second, Soviet leaders recognized, discussed, and wrote about these weaknesses before Reagan's offensive, creating the internal ferment that ultimately brought Gorbachev to power.
Third, as far as we can tell, Soviet leaders generally saw Reagan's over-hyped Star Wars defense as no realistic threat, and never significantly tried to compete with his military spending. A few wanted to respond in kind, which could have plunged the world into a new and exceedingly dangerous nuclear arms race. But - in spite of Reagan's escalation, not because of it - Gorbachev and his allies chose a more peaceful path in hopes of pursing their own domestic reforms.
From the American side, the Reagan victory myth suffers a more paradoxical challenge. Few outside events weakened the Soviet Union more than its disastrous war against the American-backed Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, for which the credit - or blame - goes back to Reagan's predecessor Jimmy Carter and his Democratic administration.
In his memoirs, Carter's CIA chief Robert Gates describes how the United States began secretly arming the Mujahideen in July 1979 - six months before Soviet tanks lumbered into their last-ever war. Thus began the largest covert military operation the CIA ever mounted, and the day Carter gave the go-ahead, his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski told him that - for good or for bad - the American intervention might encourage the Soviets to invade.
In 1998, La Nouvelle Observateur asked Brzezinski if he had any regrets given the rise of Osama bin-Laden and al-Qaeda. Never known for his humility, the great man could only scoff.
"That secret operation was an excellent idea," he said. "It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?"
So, who won the Cold War? And at what cost?
History offers few pat answers. The Soviet Union would likely have invaded Afghanistan even if Jimmy Carter had not sent the CIA to work with the mujihadeen, just as the Soviet Empire collapsed from within, and not from Mr. Reagan's reckless nuclear gamble.
Star Wars Episode 0: The Phantom Defense
Now, I'll add an anecdotal bit about Reagan's Star Wars/SDI. In college I had a course on the physics of light, lasers, and SDI. It was during the end of the Cold War that I took this course.
Light has a lot of interesting and fundamental properties. It has a variety of wavelengths that range from the visible spectrum to invisible spectrums like ultraviolet, infrared, x-rays, gamma-rays and so on. Now, a laser is a super concentrated beam of light. You could build a laser powerful enough to cut through steel. DARPA is working on building anti-aircraft lasers and anti-personnel lasers as we speak.
The idea of SDI was to put a bunch of anti-missile satellites in orbit that would fire lasers to blast missiles in flight. If you were to look up the definition of boondoggle, you might see a picture of Reagan's SDI. The technological hurdles needed to build an orbital ABM (ABM = anti ballistic missile) system would be phenomenal and costly. It makes sense that Reagan proposed it considering he and Nancy consulted with astrologers, but I digress.
Let's say you build a tracking system that can accurately track ICBM's coming to attack the US. Great! Now, how do you stop the missiles? Fire lasers at them. Lasers (light) moves thousands of times faster than missiles, so hitting them would be a piece of cake. Here comes a few hurdles. You're tracking a missile, your satellite fires a laser at the missile, the missile should be destroyed right? Well, not so fast there...
Light, including lasers, have this characteristic of nature called diffraction. You see this effect perfectly when you use a flashlight at night. In other words, light scatters as it travels. Think shotgun blast. You have a central starting point, when you pull the trigger, all the pellets scatter/spray.
OK, so what? lasers are super concentrated light, right? Yes, but even over a distance, light diffracts. Lasers are concentrated light waves, so they'll diffract over space and time. You have to do one of two things, create a really tight focused beam to overcome diffraction, or get those satellites really close to an oncoming missile. I won't even bring up atmospheric interference.
Say you overcome that technological problem. You have your system for tracking and firing a laser. Now you'll have to create a power supply to power the lasers. Hmm... you're in space, you could use the sun's solar energy to power them. Well, you'd have to build a solar collector for each ABM satellite that's enormous which would be problematic for stealth reasons. You could use nuclear reactors to power them. Good idea, what happens if you detonate one of these reactors in orbit? What happens if you detonate hundreds of them in orbit? Where does the radiation and nuclear material go? Back home to earth.
Let's say you figure a way around the power problem. Now your enemy is going to want to hit you with their nuclear missiles. They didn't spend billions and billions of dollars just for kicks. They will devise strategies to dupe your ABM system. So, they'll do one of few things. They'll build a multi-warhead missile that will deploy multiple warheads once in flight. That means, one warhead will be the nuclear warhead, tens if not hundreds will be decoy warheads. How would an ABM be able to determine a real warhead from a decoy, or decoys, as it hurtles toward the US at about 17,000 mph? Your enemy probably isn't going to launch just one multiple warhead missile at a time either. Next, your enemy isn't going to let you know which missiles are dummies either. Say they launch about 10,000 ICBM's at the US. 2,000 of which are multi-warhead missiles. You better hope you have enough satellites in orbit to hit them all. Also, You'd have about 30 minutes to knock all of them out of the sky. You'd have to build tens of thousands of killer ABM satellites to even have a prayer.
Lastly, say you overcome all those technological hurdles. (Which would be a miracle of science.) Suppose your enemy plants a group of terrorists around the world. Each of them has a briefcase nuke. Your multi-trillion dollar ABM system will be useless to stop them. In fact, all you'd need is a handful of crazy guys that are willing to commit suicide rushing at nuclear reactors. Worse, give those crazed terrorists shoulder launcher missiles to fire at a nuclear power plant. (Scenarios like this make me lose some sleep at night when I think of them.) Again, your multi-trillion dollar ABM system flies quietly in orbit as America becomes irradiated.
Now, consider this... President Bush has begun implementing a faulty ABM system using untold millions (billions?) of our tax dollars. Think about the anti-ABM measures I mentioned. Even if you have planes/satellites/missiles flying around the world ready to bomb people to smithereens, how would they stop a handful of dedicated suicidal terrorists? Billions of our tax dollars will be pissed away on this boondoggle. (The financials are hard to determine, since Bush and DOD have stifled any information about his the ABM system.)
We could use that money to create the world's most efficient anti-terrorist force in the world, or for health care for those that don't have it, fund schools, libraries, colleges, improve infrastructure, improve things domestically here at home, invest it in entrepreneurial programs for small businesses and start-ups to help grow the economy, build a space station on the moon. Whatever. The point being is that billions of dollars will be wasted on a system that will not work.
SDI (Star Wars) and Bush's land based ABM system are clear signs that Americans are scientifically illiterate. We could have used those wasted billions to improve scientific education in our country, but instead we wasted it on something that made us feel comfortable. I'd say that's a sign of a major problem.
Finally, You could say "well at least Reagan's tax cuts helped fix the economy." To add insult to injury, the so called "Reagan Boom" was triggered by a Carter appointee, Paul Volcker. Furthermore, Reagan eventually raised taxes. Thirdly, he tripled the federal debt with pork barrel spending, strapping future generations with a huge debt.
Monday, June 07, 2004
To Bury Reagan, NOT to Praise Him...
The Gipper had a great personality. He was a salesman, and a slick politician. He definitely had charm. He was optimistic, and definitely played the patriotic drum very well. Alzheimer's is a terrible disease that hurts families more than the victim of the disease itself. (Granted, it sucks all around.) As a human being, its sad to see anyone or any family suffer such a thing. My condolences to the family and their loss.
Conservatives and Republicans praise Reagan like he was the messiah. Some would say that he was the best president of the 20th Century. I wouldn't be so quick to make that statement.
Mr. Reagan may have been charming, but he certainly wasn't a great president. I'll give him credit, but he wouldn't be in my top ten list of presidents.
Let's start:
Federal debt 1980: ~$980 billion
Federal debt after Reagan (1988): ~$3.5 trillion
Who cares, we beat the Russkies by borrowing heavily from the treasury to beef up our military to crush them commies. Reagan introduced pork barrel spending to the military. $624 for a toilet seat. Our tax dollars at work under, Reagan.
Big deal, right? The debt got worse under Bush I. Clinton tried to slow that bull, but ended up with ~$5.8 trillion when he left. Now the current president has the federal debt up to $7 trillion and counting.
So, what? Well, as the debt continues to grow, the value of the dollar continues to shrink. This will force Congress to borrow more dollars to keep the government running, or raise taxes. Borrowing more dollars increases the debt, which keeps devaluing the dollar. This causes inflation. Add to that, increases in the price of gas and you'll raise prices all around. Businesses will have to raise prices to compensate for the increased gas prices. Raising taxes could trigger the same thing, but it could also bring back stagflation. Rising prices, lowering wages at the same time.
Bush follows Reagan's fiscal lead. Borrow and spend. Cut taxes on the rich, borrow and spend. Borrow and spend. I can't see Bush turning the corner and becoming fiscally responsible. The least I can say for "Dutch" is that he raised taxes, unfortunately, on the middle class.
Bottom line... The dollar shrinks, people's earning power shrinks, the economy will grind to a halt. My peeve with Reagan is that my generation, and several generations down the road will be stuck with this debt that seems to have no end in sight. The worst case scenario would be the collapse of the dollar as a unit of currency. The US will crumble under weight of its massive debt.
I'm avoiding listing all the negative stuff about Reagan, but I'll let you get your fill here. 66 Things to Remember about Ronnie.
The Gipper had a great personality. He was a salesman, and a slick politician. He definitely had charm. He was optimistic, and definitely played the patriotic drum very well. Alzheimer's is a terrible disease that hurts families more than the victim of the disease itself. (Granted, it sucks all around.) As a human being, its sad to see anyone or any family suffer such a thing. My condolences to the family and their loss.
Conservatives and Republicans praise Reagan like he was the messiah. Some would say that he was the best president of the 20th Century. I wouldn't be so quick to make that statement.
Mr. Reagan may have been charming, but he certainly wasn't a great president. I'll give him credit, but he wouldn't be in my top ten list of presidents.
Let's start:
Federal debt 1980: ~$980 billion
Federal debt after Reagan (1988): ~$3.5 trillion
Who cares, we beat the Russkies by borrowing heavily from the treasury to beef up our military to crush them commies. Reagan introduced pork barrel spending to the military. $624 for a toilet seat. Our tax dollars at work under, Reagan.
Big deal, right? The debt got worse under Bush I. Clinton tried to slow that bull, but ended up with ~$5.8 trillion when he left. Now the current president has the federal debt up to $7 trillion and counting.
So, what? Well, as the debt continues to grow, the value of the dollar continues to shrink. This will force Congress to borrow more dollars to keep the government running, or raise taxes. Borrowing more dollars increases the debt, which keeps devaluing the dollar. This causes inflation. Add to that, increases in the price of gas and you'll raise prices all around. Businesses will have to raise prices to compensate for the increased gas prices. Raising taxes could trigger the same thing, but it could also bring back stagflation. Rising prices, lowering wages at the same time.
Bush follows Reagan's fiscal lead. Borrow and spend. Cut taxes on the rich, borrow and spend. Borrow and spend. I can't see Bush turning the corner and becoming fiscally responsible. The least I can say for "Dutch" is that he raised taxes, unfortunately, on the middle class.
Bottom line... The dollar shrinks, people's earning power shrinks, the economy will grind to a halt. My peeve with Reagan is that my generation, and several generations down the road will be stuck with this debt that seems to have no end in sight. The worst case scenario would be the collapse of the dollar as a unit of currency. The US will crumble under weight of its massive debt.
I'm avoiding listing all the negative stuff about Reagan, but I'll let you get your fill here. 66 Things to Remember about Ronnie.
