It’s taken me a little while to get around to this since I’ve got other site-related stuff on my plate as well as other things, but Mark Westphal of Yardley, a member of our services who never seems to miss an opportunity to take a shot at lefties when the mood hits him, was at it again recently with this letter published several days ago in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
It will be interesting:Note: I have a link below to an in-depth interview Rolling Stone Magazine conducted with Paul Krugman that puts the lie to this garbage.
When younger voters discover that the ever-increasing taxes on Social Security and Medicare they are paying to support mostly wealthier older Americans are taking a huge chunk out of their paycheck - for many, the largest chunk. ("The young did indeed 'Rock the Vote,'" Nov. 22).
When they discover that Social Security and Medicare will be bankrupt in 30 years and all the money they have put into it will have been spent.
When they realize they will have nothing, when they could have been putting all that money into their own accounts.Ah yes, the dreaded “liberal media.” What "liberal media" are we talking about anyway, Mr. Westphal? Do you mean the New York Times, where Judith Miller wrote her propaganda with impunity that hastened the run-up to our current debacle in Iraq? Or do you mean the Washington Post, where Richard Cohen said that Patrick Fitzgerald should forget about investigating who leaked Valerie Plame's identity because the matter is too confusing for him to figure out (or where Cohen recently said that the Dems saying they were wrong to vote for the war are as bad as Bush for actually starting it)? Or Time Magazine, which proclaimed George W. Bush "Man Of The Year" last year?
When they remember the party that tried to reform Social Security was slammed by the liberal media and liberals in Congress - who had no reform plan - and the only response left is massive tax increases and/or massive service reductions.
When you find "liberal media" somewhere in print, please let me know.
When politicians discover that there are more votes in the younger generation than among senior citizens.Assuming more and more of them aren’t killed off because of Bushco’s illegal war.
Actually, Westphal did bring up something I wanted to get into anyway at some point, and that is the current state of Social Security (which, as we know, was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a means to provide income for people in retirement as a "safety net" of sorts, and not, as Dubya and the Repugs would have you believe, as a means to get rich). With Dubya’s scheme having been rejected because the vast majority of the people in this country saw it for the scam that it truly was, we are at a point where we need to reach a consensus on this through INTELLIGENT dialogue based on well informed and well reasoned opinions.
I referred to the Krugman link previously. Here it is. I believe that brings us up to speed.
The question now, of course, is where do we go from here. I have two ideas on this that I would like to see put into place:
The biggest conservative gripe on this is that the Democrats complain without offering a plan of their own. I have to reluctantly admit that they have a point, though the Democrats have often responded that this issue is not something for which we should attempt to apply a quick fix. That is correct also. We can afford to take a bit of time on this to truly fix the problem, but not too much.1) We currently have a $90,000 ceiling on income subject to social security withholding. Get rid of it. That would ensure the program’s solvency for decades.
2) I think Bushco should appoint an independent, bipartisan commission to look into Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, since the latter program is in more of a predicament than Social Security is right now. Since Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton did a good job with the 9/11 Commission, I think we should approach them on this for starters. If they decide to pass on it, I’m sure we could find a pair of reasonable adults each from one of the two major parties to work on this.
This takes you to a Moonie Times story of some House Democrats, including Robert Wexler of Florida, working on their own pet proposals on Social Security, which of course need to be hammered into an overall plan offered by the party. There has been movement on this issue, but in “fits and starts.” It’s too important not to screw up, however, especially for the party that created it to begin with.
One more thing: apparently, The Inquirer has a link out there somewhere to a “five point plan” of theirs to fix Social Security, but after repeated link attempts and keyword searches, I was unable to find it. Maybe they’re getting ready to auction it off or something in anticipation of the upcoming Knight Ridder fire sale.
2 comments:
Robert,
1. If I think you have weapons of mass destruction in your house and I break into it, and you don't, you have the legal right to shoot me because I'm violating the sovereignty of your home. How is what we have done in Iraq any different (and don't talk to me about that mealy-mouthed resolution to "use force" that everyone in Congress spinelessly approved owing to post-9/11 hysteria).
2. I seem to recall Kellyanne Conway making the same bubbleheaded remark to Bill Maher on "Real Time" earlier this year. He didn't give her the courtesy of a response. Neither will I.
3. I saw a note about the 5-point plan in the Inquirer, but I didn't follow up on it right away. I suppose I should have, because it subsequently disappeared from their site (kind of funny, actually, since Amanda Bennett, the paper's publisher, brags that "we are the Internet" in the Philadelphia area).
I actually agree with you that there is left-wing bias, and I've taken individuals who are prone to that to task (such as what I said a day or so ago about Ramsey Clark). However, it continually astonishes me when I read consersatives screaming about liberal bias while they fail, or refuse, to recognize it in themselves. And I once read Dennis Prager defending Ann Coulter, and that tells me all I need to know about him.
Robert,
I don’t recall exactly where I read this, but I seem to remember that a blogger somewhere banned you from leaving comments at her site (someone named Elizabeth? Not sure…). I can now see how smart this person was for doing that.
OK, so you think I’ve bought into “false pretenses” regarding Dubya’s war in Iraq. Let’s talk “false pretenses” then, shall we? “Weapons Of Mass Destruction Including Nukes, Mushroom Cloud, Gas Poisoning The Entire New York Subway System”…THESE were the reasons Bushco shoved in our faces as an excuse for war. Not humanitarian reasons, though that could have been justifiable if the case had been made in a manner befitting intelligent adults. Not the fact that Saddam Hussein was a mean, brutal, nasty guy. Not even for environmental reasons or threatened destruction to one of the most sacred places on earth. Any other excuse than the ones Bush came up with could possibly have been used to obtain broad-based international support (along with a piece of the action from the anticipated oil revenue, which is now below pre-Saddam levels because of the terrorism).
Regarding your argument that Iraq had WMD; to me, it depends on how you define what they are. Tactical nuclear missiles that could hit targets on the continents of Europe and Asia including other areas of the Gulf region…yep, I’d call that WMD. ICBMs tipped with chemical weapons…yep, works for me also. Chemical weapons – yep, bad stuff, but not anything I care about unless it gets used in an attack against us by Al Qaeda (and for the last time, there was no link between them and Hussein…if there had been, Al Qaeda would have hit us before 9/11 in concert with Hussein using chemical weapons). If the chemical stuff isn’t being transported through containerized freight, a briefcase, or other means of storage to this country, then guess what? I DON’T CARE! That makes it Israel’s problem or some other nation/state not on our continent. Of course, an intelligent leader could recognize the difference between an immediate threat to us and Israel, but we have Dubya, so there you are (again, assuming he and his buds didn’t want to go into Iraq all along anyway).
Let’s see, though – what exactly did Bush come up with on this? Some trailer somewhere that could be used to make fertilizer or any kind of chemical, along with mustard gas. Also, some supposed flying vehicle that could dispense poison gas that one of our generals laughed off as “a weed whacker with wings.” For this, almost 2,100 of our people are dead, thousands more injured, and thousands of innocent Iraqis killed, injured, and totally radicalized at this point. You call this success?
(I’m trying to sift through your comment for content to address and coming across a cornucopia of Repug buzzwords and catchphrases, by the way, and I’ll admit I use some variation of them also at times – “liberal media,” “mainstream media.” I can see now how thoroughly you’ve been indoctrinated.)
As far as not addressing what you said about the “rape rooms,” I did so because I’m tired of hearing this stupid argument that we had to take out Saddam Hussein because he was a ruthless bastard. As I noted earlier, that was NOT the original argument Bush sold to us. Besides, what are we supposed to do then, take out every mean, rotten leader in the world that we don’t like? Are we then going to send our people all over the world to Asia, South American and sub-Saharan Africa and get everybody who behaves badly? I know full well that you choose not to agree with John Murtha, but I happen to believe him because he’s spent a lifetime serving our country in the military and in government. He says that this war has wrecked our army (eerily paralleling this with the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, as far as I’m concerned). Besides (and here comes ANOTHER argument you won’t accept), Saddam Hussein, rotten as he was, was a buffer against Muslim extremism, which is the real enemy, and brought order of a sort to that area of the world. A general from the Hudson Institute (don’t know much about their leanings) appeared on CNN today and basically corroborated what I just said. Finally, Dubya could have chosen to wage this war in the same manner as his father did, building support from a serious coalition of nations by making the case properly, but of course, he chose not to, and he (and this country) are now paying the price.
Regarding point number 3, all I’m going to say is that it’s your choice to buy into Bush’s scheme to ruin Social Security if you choose, though I should point out that the vast majority of the people in this country have chosen not to do so because they realized that it was nothing but a shell game to generate a windfall of fees for the financial services companies who helped bankroll Bush’s campaigns in 200 and 2004. Also, it would have done nothing to reduce the budget deficit and put the savings of millions of plan participants at greater risk (i.e., their hard earned life savings at the disposal of Wall Street money managers versus the full faith and credit of the United States government, and they plainly wished to continue the status quo with the latter arrangement).
Ah, but I have now come to the best part, haven’t I? I am “unable to separate news from opinion,” am I? THAT is precious.
Let me try to explain to you what I’m doing here since for some reason it is unclear to you. I present a news story that I happened to come across or some newsworthy event (note the phrase “news story”). Wherever I possibly can, I try to link to that story so the reader understands what I’m referring to (I probably have hundreds of links at this site, and I will readily admit that this is not an original blogger formula). After I’ve presented the news, I then present my opinion based on that news story. I’ve frequently strung together some news stories and related web material. Someone can comment with their own opinion with a link to something else related to the post if they so choose and either agree with my opinion or tell me I’m full of it. So hence, in the posts, the news parts are separated from the opinion parts, more or less. To say that I don’t know the difference between news and opinion is almost as unworthy of a response as your “rape room” comment.
I also got a kick out of your request to “provide evidence of a right-wing article that passes for news.” I don’t have to provide a damn thing for you. However, I should point out that I dissected that piece of tripe from David Limbaugh a few weeks ago on your site – that would suffice. Also, I hate to break the news to you, but I disagree with your statement that “Dan Rather spins left-wing propaganda as news” for this simple reason: Dan Rather is no longer a network news anchor, having given up that position some time ago (I agree that he botched the Dubya/National Guard story, but because he relied on Burkett to maintain the “chain of custody” in the reporting, and everybody should have seen Burkett for the whack job that he truly was. What is sad is that Rather was right – media outside this country took what Rather reported as a given – but everyone will remember instead that he screwed it up by flunking lessons you learn in Journalism 101).
So now that I’ve responded to your latest comments, let’s surmise your activity to date at this site. First, you said the Vermont schoolteacher who gave the quiz where he made fun of Bush was an idiot. I didn’t like that, but I can live with it, especially because I actually agreed with you on that as nearly as I could figure out. Then, you state in another post that Bruce Springsteen’s music sucks (I seem to recall that you also spewed some bilious garbage about him being “un-American” or something). I took personal umbrage at that. Then, I actually paid you a compliment for your frequency of comments (what was I thinking anyway?), and you repay me by basically saying that I don’t know what I’m talking about. And today, you tell me that I don’t know the difference between news and opinion. That’s quite enough for me. You may now consider yourself officially banned from posting comments to this site.
Because of your activity, I’ve now had to set up comment moderation. Nice job – I haven’t had to do that since I first set up the site in June. I know I’m not exactly lighting it up on the comment meter as it is, but I can live with that. That’s a small price to pay as far as I’m concerned for no longer having to deal with your baiting, confrontational rhetoric.
If you want to announce on your site that Dubya is master of the universe and liberals are nothing but a blight and a pestilence…hey, knock yourself out. Have at it – I don’t care. Do it on someone else’s dime, but not mine. Goodbye.
Post a Comment