Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Reagan-Bush Revolution

* On or about Jan 19, 2009, a 93-year-old WWII veteran froze to death in his Michigan home. His local government had turned off his electricity. On his kitchen table was an electric bill clipped to a large amount of money. He was $1000 behind on his electric bill.
* Will he be the last casualty of the Reagan-Bush revolution? Probably not, since Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, Rush Limbaugh, Steve Gill, Phil Valentine, George Will and others still have a vast following of self-righteous, anti-tax, anti-government, anti-intellectual Kool Aid drinkers.
* Why would people of good will support a movement that enlarged the number of Princeton graduates sequestering billions by shuffling paper on Wall Street at a time when the need for Wall Street paper shufflers was actually diminishing? Why would ordinary workers support a movement that encouraged multi-state retailers to off-shore suppliers for pennies per item? Why would economists justify a movement that concentrated wealth in a tiny fraction of the population, that perpetuated a plutocracy, that made war on the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid? Don't economists know that a healthy economy needs people down there who can afford what they need?
* On or about Jan 19, 2009, a 93-year-old WWII veteran froze to death in his Michigan home.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Israel / Gaza

* Cal Thomas, in his Jan 4 column, condemns Hamas as Nazi-like, as the Nazis of modern times. He espoused the invasion of Gaza that is now underway, that he hopes will be pressed to total victory. Judging from his earlier writings he believes that the western Judeo-Christian civilization can better vanquish the middle-east jihadists if Muslims are dehumanized as Islamofacists.
* I don't admire mullah government, Wahhabi madrassas, female oppression and terrorist tactics more than does the next Euro-American, and I have no patience for the word "infidel"; but, looking over the sweep of history from the 4th century to the present, I see much to justify some modesty on our part. We Judeo-Christians have committed the greatest crimes--senseless wars, impulsive invasions, slavery, female oppression, colonialism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the domination and exploitation of nearly every other nation on earth. Our wasteful ways are almost entirely responsible for despoiling the planet, leaving an impoverished environment for future generations. Our sense of entitlement is boundless.
* If the self-righteous Cal Thomas could imagine himself as a Gazan, displaced from his ancestral land, crowded in a virtual concentration camp, blockaded from the outside world, and experiencing daily deprivation and humiliation, he might see Hamas as analogous to Comanches or Apaches resisting domination by the more technologically advanced and better organized European tribes.
* Israel needs a brave new paradigm for peace as do we.