Sorry that I haven't posted in awhile. Been checking the messages and there was a lot of nothing going on here. Posts seemed to have picked up, so thought I'd make one of my own.
Before going into the main subject, I'm going to say a few thinks I think y'all know about me, but just for the record I'll say them again. I'm no friend of any politician that wants to give us more government, or to take away some liberty to give us more security or even money. This is a great country. That doesn't mean it's perfect. Far from it. We're better than most on most counts. Some thing that are wrong here are the governments fault. Other things are because we as citizens make some very bad personal choices. A few things are a mix of both or are related to one another. Patriotism is not my country right or wrong; it is my country for us as citizens to improve.
For the past eight years we've seen a lot of chickens come home to roost. Sorry to see it happen with the Republicans in power. They're getting tarred with a pretty broad brush. Problem is that it wasn't the Republicans doing. It was the doing of the neo-conservatives who have nothing in common with the small government and moderate Republican I knew as a kid and a young adult. Matter of fact it started getting bad with Nixon. I don't mean Watergate. That was bad enough. I'm talking about new functions like the EPA and the extensions of the welfare state.
Everyone talks about a post-9/11 world. No one talks about the why of that awful 9/11 tragedy. It was pay back for years of the U.S. not minding its own business and fooling around in the internal affairs of other countries. Most of them were Moslem countries where their values are the opposite in most cases from ours. In other countries we tried to give liberty to folks who were unwilling to take it for themselves or who just seemed content to wallow under socialist, communist or fascist dictators. Their attitudes haven't changed and they resent our interference. When competition for oil gets thrown into the mix, our politicians just couldn't help themselves.
Remember the Shah of Iran? The hostages that the wimp Carter let languish? Our support for Saddam Hussein against the Iranian Revolution and the Aytollahs? How about Vietnam or Korea? South Korean youth who live better than their North Korean neighbors protest the U.S. presence in their country. Gratitude? Nope, not a whisper - - - it's hatred.
Now at home. We just can't let good enough be. The Democrats wanted more poor folks to own homes. The Republicans were intimidated by the moral argument and left their practical economics at home. Fannie and Freddie open the floodgates. Other folks see the cheap and easy credit, and they, too, are off to the races. Bush gets a huge housing bubble while trying to fund a war against terrorism (read that to protect U.S. oil interests) without any offsetting in spending. We get a huge budget deficit in spite of his tax cuts dramatically increasing tax revenue. The global depression that's coming is scaring the crap out of Wall Street and Main Street.
Our politicians from both parties answer is more big government and a bailout. It's going to get worse and the election is going to make it worse still.
I've written all of this as a warning that we must be prepared for what is coming. Here's my prediction. Obama WILL win the elction. He'll win big with more than 300 Electoral College votes with a strong majority in the House and Senate. He'll also be a one term President.
Obama will raise taxes and spending. Investment income will leave the U.S. The deficit will get worse not better. Obama will find out that he can't get out of Iraq in less than 2 and probably 2.5 years - - - well into his presidency. He'll chip around the edges of National Health Insurance enough that our private sector medical system and insurance programs will start an implosion of their own. In the end, he'll make more of us poorer and ever more dependent on big government. It is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Jack
Jack
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