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Now President Obama has entered into a deal with Congressional Republicans to extend the Bush-era tax cuts to billionaires, while at the same time this cabal is refusing to give even a meager cost-of-living increase in Social Security benefits to senior citizens.
What a travesty! Obama has gone back on his word. He has lied to the American people, just as Bush and Cheney lied about the alleged existence of so-called “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) in Iraq as a pretense for invading that country.
While the President and Congress are living it up, while we continue to bail out greedy mega-corporations, the middle class is suffering, particularly those (i.e., seniors) on fixed incomes.
In 2008, after eight years of the most incompetent administration in the history of the United States, we were promised “hope”. Instead we’ve been given more of the same—tax breaks for the ultra-rich, continuation of a no-win war in Afghanistan, pandering to illegal aliens.
It is abundantly clear that both major political parties today are morally bankrupt! Obama, Reid, Pelosi, McConnell, Boehner, Palin. Ugh (and double ugh)!!! Is this what our founding fathers fought and died for?
(Reprinted in its entirety with permission from Eddie’s Corner, the blog of Eddie Rose at www.eddierose.org .)
The Honorable Eddie Rose
Former Laguna Niguel (CA) City Councilman
“A Voice—Not an Echo”
The “Honorable” Eddie Rose? Perhaps “The I-should-keep-up-on-the-news Eddie Rose” might be more like it.
Eddie, while I agree with you basic premise (unfortunate that seniors received no cost of living increase in their Social Secutiy checks, while Congress….run by Democrats, by the way…received their AUTOMATIC annual pay increase), I take issue with a couple things:
1. Haven’t you been keeping up with the news? One of the unfortunate (for Democrats) revelations in the Wikileak info-dump was the series of memoranda, vindicating President Bush. It turns out that Iraq DID possess WMD, including 500 metric TONS of “yellow cake” uranium. Ooops. (btw, this, to the informed, was no real revelation, since DOD reports verified this, along with a raft of other WMD found, years ago).
2. “The most incompetent administration in the history of the United States”? That’s pretty funny. Do the numbers, Eddie: that title goes to Carter, by a landslide. The ONLY reason it isn’t being awarded to Obama is because his administration isn’t over yet.
Finally, The answer to your final note is: No, our founding fathers fought and died so that you, Eddie, could live your life in blissful ignorance, wrapped securely in the blanket of freedom they provided…
Ir looks like neither the Left nor the Right has a monopoly on “the big lie”. NO WMD were ever found in Iraq. Even the incompetent Bush now admits that! Bush invaded Iraq to carry out his daddy’s vendetta against Sadaam. I agree with former Los Angeles County District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi that Bush (the puppet) and Cheney (the puppetmaster) should be prosecuted as war criminals.
Sorry. You are wrong. According to DOD reporting (2004-2008), significant quantities of WMD (sarin, mustard gas, liquid precursors to other blistering agents, 500 metric tons of yellow cake, etc). Unfortunately, Wikileaks, through it’s last data dump, confirmed these reports.
….not that it’ll change anything, since for Liberals, actual facts tend to be rather inconvenient….
…and “war criminals”? Perhaps you ought to read up on what constitutes a “war crime” (hint, it doesn’t involve congressional and unanymous UN approval for action…you might wish to read UN1441 as well as other associated UN resolutions, dating back to 1991, the cessation of action)
Can you send a link to that, RWB? It’s pretty hard to believe that if they found this yellow cake or other “significant quantities of WMD” we wouldn’t have heard it trumpeted by the Bushies. They were unmistakeably put out that they didn’t find any WMD to justify their invasion, and I was frankly surprised they didn’t even bother planting any.
Why would it be kept secret anyway? That doesn’t make ANY sense. This brings back memories of what some intelligence experts warned at the outset of the WikiLeaks dump – that a lot of the classified documents were bound to be intentional misinformation originally created for political purposes or to mislead our enemies.
Send documentation please.
RWB’s arguments are supported in numerous places – How about the New York Post?
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/us_did_find_iraq_wmd_AYiLgNbw7pDf7AZ3RO9qnM
Not really on point as responsive to the blog. The real response should be that seniors HAVE continually received increases in social security as it was adopted with the thought that it would provide about 2 years of pay after retirement. Since that initial adoption, life expectancies have continued to dramatically increase as has the term of payment of benefits. Benefits that by every calculation have no relationship whatsoever to what the worker actually paid into the system. Like everything else funded by government, we need to come up with a plan to completely phase out this unfunded liability.
Hi Vern,
Here are a few links of interest. I’ve taken a cursory look for the original (DOD) reports, where I initially saw this information, but they’ve either been taken down, or I’m just showing my computer idiocy (an even bet either way…).
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2005/11/02/the-no-wmd-lie-2/ (this link has a partial recap of the weapons found, plus a few minor links).
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/24/wikileaks-documents-show-wmds-found-in-iraq/ (this is an indirect link to the Wikileaks info).
Also, just for fun, and to dispel another myth (that Iraq had no ties to al Qaeda), here’s a “Weekly Standard” report of continuingly declassified Iraqi internal documents, along with CIA docs, proving the relationship. Now, this IS a Conservative web site, so don’t bother reading the fluff. Rather, link to the memos and reports and see for yourself…).
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp
Here’s what I speculate on these days: Since only around 15% of the documents recovered from Iraq have so far been vetted, and already show that the reasons stated by Bush for going to war to be accurately stated, I wonder what the rest of the 85% of docs will reveal….
One last note: the “DebkaFile” (Jerusalem reporting agency), about 4 months before the war, reported that Iraq was moving it’s inventory of WMD to the Bekaa Valley. Almost four years later, this information was confirmed by American news sources…..
One more thing: I wanted to respond to the initial comment by Eddie, with regard to the “tax breaks for billionaires….bupkis for seniors”. Eddie’s equating tax breaks with seniors SS payments is not a good comparison, although I understand the point he’s trying to make, while taking a shot at the “rich”. When it was first announced that seniors weren’t going to be getting a cost of living increase is their SS payments, I wrote a piece, dated October 12th, that stated:
“It was announced today that Social Security recipients will not be receiving a cost of living increase next year. The claim by the administration is that “inflation is too low to warrant the increase”.
So, folks who are BARELY getting by on the paltry amount given to them by the government, will be getting NO increase. Meanwhile, the cost of goods and services goes up because of taxation and increasing regulation. So, the pittance they currently receive will be further stretched, without any relief in the form of cost of living increase.
Oh, by the way….
Are voters aware that members of Congress receive an AUTOMATIC pay raise EVERY YEAR? In fact, the ONLY method for preventing the automatic pay raise is if some Congressman writes a bill which would specifically stop the pay raise….for that year only. Then, once written, it must be voted on…just like any other bill.
So, Congress will get their raise, automatically, while Social Security recipients will get screwed…..”.
Having been inside the system,shouldn’t Eddie have a) been aware of this and b) condemned this nonsense?
Cheers,
RWB
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/bush-279814-war-tax.html
The above is a pretty good guest editorial in the Register by my old nemesis Richard Lara. Some excerpts:
At the end of a wonderfully detailed analysis of the likely consequences of President Barack Obama’s proposed extension of the Bush tax cuts, the Register editorial concludes: “These are all solid economic reasons for maintaining the Bush tax cuts. But the best reason remains: It’s not the government’s money. It belongs to those who earn it.” As is the case with many important questions, this question cannot be effectively answered via pithy one-liners.
There is no question as to whether the national debt belongs to the U.S. government. It does. (Just ask China.) There is also no question that the United States government belongs to the American people. Therefore, the national debt is our debt.
We incurred much of our debt during the Bush administration and its war in Iraq, which the GOP resoundingly supported; but neither President George W. Bush nor GOP leaders were shy about borrowing money, lots of it, to fund the war. Many Americans had trouble accepting all of this borrowing and spending, in part because it was unclear what we were getting for it. …
Yet, as soon as the President Obama set foot in Washington, the GOP abruptly changed its position on borrowing…
Read the rest: http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/bush-279814-war-tax.html