Ralph Nader has just announced that he is running for president. So now we have an Arab and a guy named Hussein. They are expected to split the Empty Rhetoric vote. Governor Huckabee, ever honest to a fault, observed that Republicans were glad to see him because he had taken votes away from the Democrats in the past.
For those of us whose main interest in politics is to mock, it is a joy and a promise of wonderful things to come.
[It is common to denounce Nader for his ego, a euphemism for arrogance. Notice how Arabs so frequently denounce the US and Israel for being "arrogant"? Not aggressive or imperialist or bullying or any other of the adjectives of denunciation. Always arrogant. Which is exactly how outsiders generally experience Arabs. What can it mean?]
So with a convention fight as a real possibility if Clinton wins Texas and Ohio, and the assurance that the nominee would come out of it dirtied up, there is now someplace for offended and disaffected Democrats to go to waste their votes.
As the clock has been wound backward to 2000, does it mean I have to give back the seven years worth of birthday presents?
I am amazed that you have completely given up caring about the election. We are not better off after 8 years of a stupid tool of big business. You should just become a Republican and vote for the person who will lower your taxes the most.
ReplyDeleteDear God,
ReplyDeleteYou have inadvertently touched on the nub of the thing. The candidates are all morally bankrupt because the public is intellectually bankrupt. None of them has an Iraq policy nor a foreign policy that suggests any interest in the subject beyond getting their respective nominations.
Taxes. There is one issue that is on-off, yes-no, about which there is nothing to debate. That is the expiration or making permanent of the 2003 tax cuts.
The Democrats without exception are for letting them expire. The Republicans, including McCain, are for making them permanent.
So far as I can ascertain maintaining the tax cuts will reinforce the inequality of the distribution of income in the United States. According the CIA Factbook's own GINI index, the US has by far the most unequal distribution of income of any developed country. Further, restricting the government's tax revenues will perpetuate or exacerbate the government's dangerously large budget deficit.
Against these arguments the Republicans have offered nothing but their tired and specious nonsequitur that money in private hands is always more productive than when spent by the government. On which theory there should be no government and no taxes. By which they mean that there should be taxes but that someone else should pay them.
Nothing recommends this argument but its venerability.