Wednesday
Mar092005
Wednesday, March 9, 2005 at 11:04AM
George W. Bush's 60-day, 60-city tour
to sell the idea that Social Security is the biggest problem in the
world right now is a total diversion. Why work on the real nasty
problems when you can worry about something that is good until 2052 if
you do nothing in the interim? He will expend no political capital (as
he likes to put it) on this because, if he fails, so what? There are a
couple generations worth of time to do something. Meanwhile, he is
hoping the people won't notice that we have now passed 1,500 American
casualties in Iraq, even the Shiites are discussing whether it would be
better to break up Iraq, all factions in Iraq agree that the Americans
should leave sooner rather than later, the European Union is still not
really throwing its money in (or troops), we are approaching $300
billion in spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israel truce could
come apart again at any moment, Blair rebuffs us on global warming, we
can't get off our hands on Darfur, Greenspan says we are in
unsustainable debt, India and China will out-compete us for oil, and
most of our rights including the right to sue are being stripped away
as the massive corporate giveaways continue. Other than that and a few
dozen other worthy problems, it makes a lot of sense for the President
to concentrate on a non-problem. Let's fix something that doesn't need
fixing. He should have been a sleight-of-hand magician.[more]