licentious radio

Sunday, August 11, 2002
[12:46:05 PM]

Political cartoon: "Here's your Social Security check, Dad. Don't spend it all on drugs."

[12:05:47 PM]

So the story is Democrats did some polling and found that Bush's popularity wouldn't translate into election victories in November. So they didn't attack Bush.

But Bush has a trump card. He can go to war on Iraq. The war on Iraq is likely to have coattails, and now Democrats aren't well-positioned to oppose the war.

The hopeful signs are that maybe there is enough resistance in the military bureaucracy and from other nations that Bush won't be able to attack Iraq this fall. Perhaps all this focus on terrorism will actually prevent terrorist attacks. (You can imagine that a terrorist attack this month would make it easy for Bush to attack Iraq in time for the election.)

If Democrats can get a majority in the House and Senate, a Democrat who wants to be elected president could *lead* the way -- rolling back civil rights abuses, and stopping Bush's attacks on the American people.

But that rosy scenario starts with preventing the war on Iraq.

[11:54:59 AM]
No electronic voting!

The problem is, you can't just assume there will be no fraud. Clearly, Florida under Bush was riddled with scams to block minorities from voting, or to keep their votes from being counted. What Bush and his cronies did there is a shame on Florida, and on the United States.

We need paper ballots that are tamper-proof. We need machines at the precinct to validate the ballots -- after you vote, you feed the ballot to a machine, and make sure it reads your vote correctly. Then you turn it in. There is no room for "intent of the voter" questions.

And then we need accurate accounting for the number of votes by precinct, and a clear audit-trail for the ballots as they are moved and stored.

Do not leave any room for fraud.

[11:39:24 AM]
Cheney said he would serve a second term if his doctors, his wife, and Bush allowed it. In Cheney's worldview, voters don't matter.

Isn't it incredible that they got away with it -- so far?

As time passes, it's more and more obvious that the Supreme Court majority's deadline was completely phony. There would have been no problem with counting the votes in Florida, except that it would have left open the possibility of Gore winning the election.

[11:24:40 AM]
There are 200 or maybe 300 Al Qaeda terrorists in the world.

While Bush was effective in blocking investigations of Bin Laden -- allowing the September 11 attacks to be successful -- Bush has sense spent something like a billion dollars per terrorist. While some Bush cronies wouldn't have made as much money, it would have been much more efficient just to prevent the September 11 attacks.

[11:11:41 AM]
The way to deal with hate-mongering is to shine a light on it. Zero tolerance for racist/religious/nationalist hate-mongering in political discussions.

When Rove's thugs start in, mercilously attack them for hate-mongering. Insist that hate-mongering has no place in the discussion, and that the hate-mongerers be fired. Don't give them a single inch.

This is the way to beat the Republicans.

(The party of Lincoln has become the party of the racists. Don't let Republican politicians use racism to win.)

[10:52:40 AM]
The Democrats will win by standing for peace and prosperity. The current Bush junta has made it perfectly clear they prefer war, but also that they will engineer poverty for the masses.

Clinton showed that with right policies, we can have tremendous prosperity, and promote peace in the world. We are in the middle of an economic boom -- made possible by technology and demographics. Only outrageous events can block the prosperity. The Bush junta is doing its best, though.

With prosperity-allowing policies, everyone will be better off, even the outrageously wealthy. Again, the difference is that the Bush junta needs for the 99% to be poor.

[10:39:52 AM]
The thing about WorldCom, Global Crossing and the rest is that we're missing the real story. Yes, there was a bubble. Yes, they bet the bubble would continue. Yes, they got caught when the bubble melted down abruptly. Yes, they took extreme steps to cover up their problems. They lied to the people of the world.

We've seen bubbles before. But we've also seen bubbles end. Left to their own devices, bubbles fade. The companies eventually figure out that growth is slowing. They stop building capacity and inventory. Things smooth out gradually.

Not this time. This time Al Greenspan killed the bubble -- just after the peak -- instead of letting it fade. There was no time for companies to adjust their planning. Whack.

It's not that we know what would have happened. But we know things wouldn't have been this bad. And remember that we knew at the time the bubble was already past the peak. The dumbest dot-coms were already history.

The point is, some huge share of the responsibility for these collapses goes back to Al Greenspan.

[10:25:06 AM]
The air conditioning is back. Thanks!