First off, I told you a while ago that I wouldn't have as much time for you as I used to. We appreciate that you miss us, but can you call off the attack dogs? I'm busy enough as it is trying to sort out the scam Nigerian princes from the real ones, and now I have to deal with what can only be described as a coordinated effort to make me write more. We at DoG love getting your emails at DelusionsofGrandeurBlog [at] gmail [dot] com, but cutting and pasting an email you found at the online petition loses its effect after the thousandth reading. Move on, people!
But please don't move on, check back from time to time. We miss you too!
Secondly, is it just not having enough time? To be honest, it's not. I may have lost the fire, DoGgers. Yes, Bush still enrages me, but you can only say douchebag and twatwaffle so many times before it loses its intrinsic oomph. Take this Blackwater kerfuffle, for example. The fact that we have more mercenary troops in Iraq than the 160,000 U.S. military solders, and that those mercenaries have no oversight by anyone in the world has been common knowledge for years now. In a single Google search, I found a story on PBS from 2005. And that was just the first page on the search. So should I have been beating my head against the wall for the last two years, or been even a little surprised when they sent Blackwater in to "patrol" New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? It's maddening. So I just keep it to myself. The knowledge is out there; I'm not bringing anything new to the party.
The Democratic congress has been a bigger failure than one could have possibly imagined. I'm not talking about getting the troops out of Iraq. After reading this article by George Packer, I'm not convinced we should ever leave Iraq. No, it's one thing for the Republicans in congress to give Bush his monarchical powers, but when the Democrats bend over and take it up the ass, giving Bush unlimited authority to do anything and everything, it's easy to get tired of the blogging game right quick.
So what am I doing here today? Because today, I have a point of view that is counter to most liberals, from what I can tell. I feel that I have something different to say on this one.
Are you ready?
I agree with Bush for vetoing the child health care plan but I disagree with his reasons for doing it.
In a nutshell, Bush vetoed the child health care plan because of his dogmatic adherence to the principle of the free market. Or to put it another way - to keep the commies at bay. This, in my opinion, is stupid. It's always been stupid. For them, it's always been less a principle, and more of a way to keep the rich richer. Which is to say, not at all a principle and only about keeping the rich richer. The "free market is always right" meme is the rich's way of tricking the poor into following them backwards though time to their Dickensian utopia of starving proletariat in their slums eating their own dead, completely ignored by anyone who can afford to.
However, I agree with Bush's veto because of how the child health care plan was going to be paid for - a tax on cigarettes. Now before those of you who know me personally come down on me for protecting my own self interests, let me assure you, without specifying why, that this tax would not affect me. I'm against it for two reasons:
1) Regardless of how you feel about the supposed immorality of smoking and its inherent dangers, a tax on cigarettes ends up being a regressive tax, meaning it is paid by the people who can least afford it - the poor (much like the lottery, which I am also against). People lower on the income scale smoke in much larger numbers than those with higher incomes. You can call it a moral failing of anyone who picks up the cancer sticks, or you can make a claim that they smoke more because of less access to education about the dangers of smoking. You could even suppose that they have a bleaker outlook for their future with a cigarette providing a small, however brief escape from the daily rigors they must endure. All of that is beside the point. If we are going to expand the federal government -- and we should, particularly by giving our children health care -- it should not be on the backs of the poor. (And as a 1(a): do we really want to rely on people continuing to smoke so that lower income children can keep their health care?)
2) Sin tax. The libertarian streak in me finds sin taxes abhorrent because of the slippery slope it presents. We already tax cigarettes and alcohol to great extremes. What's next? What happens when the exerstapo decides that television leads to sloth, a deadly sin, and slaps a tax on sitting on your ass in front of the tube? (Or as the immortal George Harrison put it - If you try to sit, sit, I'll tax your seat.) The fat police are already in action in New York City shutting down anyone using transfats in their cooking. When's the tax on ice cream going to kick in? I don't think it should be anyone's job in government to decide which products that are going to kill me are bad and should be taxed (cigarettes, alcohol) and which products that are going to kill me should be subsidized (high fructose corn syrup, pharmaceutical industry, chemical industry, petroleum industry, lead-based children's toys industry). Make it illegal, or leave it be. We should be allowed to legally kill ourselves however we see fit.
So I'm glad Bush vetoed the bill, but only because I think we should pay for the children's health care by stopping every and all government subsidy and corporate bailout scheme funneled to massive corporations in the drug, food, oil, and chemical industries. Where's your free market religion when it comes to them, Mr. President?
Come to think of it, if we dropped all the corporate welfare, we'd all have free health care for life. Think about that.
