I’m not saying anything that everyone shouldn’t already know. Bush cries “Social Security is a crisis” and everyone is expected to jump. You’d think we’d be wiser after he cried “wolf” on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His backers are even sending in the Swift Boat dogs to smear AARP, despite their (ill advised, IMHO) support of Bush’s disastrously expensive prescription drug plan. And he says Social Security is a crisis (40 years from now). If he wants a crisis, try climate change. There will be more fiscal costs to that than Social Security. Actually, if the federal government paid back what it has borrowed against the Social Security Trust Fund, it would be solvent into the distant future.
While Kerry was defined by his opposition (and even supporters) as a flip-flopper, how did Bush escape the same label over something more important, like why we attacked Saddam Hussein’s regime in the first place.
A cousin forwarded me this comment:
The Democrats’ mistake was thinking that a disastrous war and national bankruptcy would be of concern to the electorate.
The Republicans correctly saw that the chief concern of the electorate was to keep gay couples from having an abortion.
I have to really wonder about our gullibility if not downright stupidity to not see what is right in front of our faces.
Thanks go to Alaska State Reps Woodie Salmon, Sharon Cissna, Les Gara and Beth Kerttula for showing some independence and guts in coming out against House Joint Resolution 4 last week. This resolution is the annual down-on-the-knees begging Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
I’m not surprised but saddened other intelligent reps didn’t join them. Kind of like refusing the ethanol pledge that Presidential candidates are supposed to take in Iowa. We Alaskans aren’t as independent as we might like to think we are.
If we put as much energy (pun intended) into trying to get better mileage on our vehicles, we’d save far more oil than ANWR would produce. How about a resolution requesting Congress to close the loophole on SUVs and the CAFE standards? Better mileage “would reduce our nation’s future need for imported oil, help balance the nation’s trade deficit, and significantly increase the nation’s security” as well as save our constituents money at the pump, while indirectly reducing our insurance rates.
Sound familiar? It can sound as mom and apple pie (Alaska style) as HJR 4. As was said more than once since the boom of the Prudhoe Bay-Valdez oil pipeline, “Oh, God, please grant us another pipeline. We promise not to piss it away this time”. Sure thing.
