Republicans...nay sayers...first last and always

 

 

the party that pisses away Trillions is now trying to wrap itself in fiscal responsibility...but that should not be a surprise...a reading of the below blog post (http://daggatt.blogspot.com/2009/02/1993-budget-act.html ) gives some history to what the Republican party does over and over again...LIES!!!

 

 

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

the 1993 budget act

A little bit of economic history:

On August 10, 1993, President Clinton signed into law the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (the 1993 Budget Act). Four days earlier, it had passed the Senate by a vote of 51 to 50 – with Vice President Gore breaking a tie and casting the deciding 51st vote for passage. (Note: You didn’t have to get 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate in those days. The filibuster was reserved for extraordinary occasions, like denying civil rights to black people.) The day before that it had passed the House by a vote of 218 to 216. In both Houses of Congress, the vote literally could not have been closer. And in both cases, not a single Republican voted in support of the Act.

The 1993 Budget Act was President Clinton’s response to mounting federal deficits and debt. Under President Carter, the federal deficit had been modest – averaging $55 billion a year. But under Reagan, it exploded to an average of $186 billion a year. Federal spending as a percentage of GDP went from less than 21% under Carter to an average of around 23% under Reagan. During the eight years Reagan was president the national debt nearly tripled, from roughly $900 billion to $2.6 trillion. It rose from 34% of GDP to 55% of GDP. By the last full year of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, the federal budget deficit had reached a record $290 billion (after having also set a record the previous year). Reaganomics had resulted in a bloodbath of red ink. (As an aside, contrary to popular myth, economic growth averaged slightly higher under Carter than it did under Reagan.)

All that debt was creating a political backlash. During the 1992 presidential campaign, independent candidate Ross Perot managed to garner 19% of the vote, with opposition to continuing federal budget deficits one of the cornerstones of his campaign.

The 1993 Budget Act was President Clinton’s response to the economic and political consequences of mounting federal debt. Among other things, it:

• It created 36 percent and 39.6 income tax rates for individuals.
• It created a 35 percent income tax rate for corporations.
• The cap on Medicare taxes was repealed.
• Transportation fuels taxes were raised by 4.3 cents per gallon.
• The taxable portion of Social Security benefits was raised.
• The phase-out of the personal exemption and limit on itemized deductions were permanently extended.

As you might expect, Republicans went nuts. Here are a few of their statements at the time (thanks to David Waldman):

Rep. Robert Michel (R-IL), Los Angeles Times, 5/28/93:

They will remember who let loose this deadly virus into our economic bloodstream.

Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), GOP Press Conference, House TV Gallery, 8/5/93:

I believe this will lead to a recession next year. This is the Democrat machine's recession, and each one of them will be held personally accountable.

Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), 5/27/93:

...your economic program is a job killer.

Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), CNN, 7/28/93:

This plan will not work. If it was to work, then I'd have to become a Democrat...

Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), CNN, 7/28/93:

...We have a stagnant economy and there is nothing down the road that makes it look like we're going to have the kind of economic growth that puts people to work.

Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), 8/5/93:

Do you know what? This is your package. We will come back here next year and try to help you when this puts the economy in the gutter...

Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), GOP News Conference, Senate Gallery, 8/3/93:

Come next year... we're going to find out whether we have higher deficits, we're going to find out whether we have a slower economy, we're going to find out what's going to happen to interest rates, and it's our bet that this is a job killer.

Rep. Robert Dornan (R-CA), 8/5/93:

The problem with our economy is that there is too little employment and too little growth. This plan will do nothing to improve that condition and will actually make it worse.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA), 5/27/93:

This is really the Dr. Kevorkian plan for our economy.

Rep. Thomas Ewing (R-IL), 8/5/93:

...This bill is a disaster waiting to happen.

Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-MN), 3/17/93:

...will stifle economic growth, destroy jobs, reduce revenues, and increase the deficit.

Rep. Phil Crane (R-IL), 3/18/93:

...a recipe for economic and fiscal disaster.

Rep. Dick Armey, CNN, 2/18/93:

I will tell you, this program will not give you deficit reduction. It will be a disaster for the performance of the economy.

Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), CNN, 8/2/93:

The impact on job creation is going to be devastating, and the American young people in particular will suffer a fairly substantial deferment of their lives because there simply won't be jobs for the next two to three years to go around to our young graduates across the country.

Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), CNN, 8/2/93:

Clearly this is a job killer in the short run. The revenues forecast for this budget will not materialize; the costs of this budget will be greater than what is forecast. The deficit will be worse, and it is not a good omen for the American economy.

Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), 8/5/93:

The economy will sputter along. Dreams will be put off and all this for the hollow promise of deficit reduction and magical theories of lower interest rates. Like so many of the President's past promises, deficit reduction will be another cruel hoax.

Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA), 8/4/93:

The simple fact is that the Clinton plan will not lower interest rates. It will not lower inflation. It will not create jobs. And it will not lower the deficit. The Clinton tax plan will spur inflation, lose jobs, increase the deficit, and hurt our economic growth.

Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH), 5/27/93:

The votes we will take today will not be soon forgotten by the American voter. [They] will lead to more taxes, higher inflation, and slower economic growth.

Rep. Jim Bunning (R-KY), 8/5/93:

It will not cut the deficit. It will not create jobs. And it will not cut spending.

Rep. Clifford Stearns (R-FL), 3/17/93:

...It will be the kind of impact that this country can't absorb. It will slow economic growth, contribute to the massive federal deficit....

Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO), 8/4/93:

...It will raise your taxes, increase the deficit, and kill over one million jobs.

This is just a sample of the Republican OUTRAGE at the time.

Of course, the rest is history. What followed was the longest economic expansion in US history and the fastest economic growth in a generation. Over 23 million jobs were created (compared with a total of 5 million during the 12 years of BOTH Bushes combined – much less than the increase in the labor force during those years). The stock market surged during the Clinton presidency with the S&P 500 increasing by 300%. Clinton bequeathed a federal budget that ran four consecutive years of surpluses totaling $560 billion. The projected 10-year surplus when he left office was $5.6 trillion (causing Fed chairman Alan Greenspan to express concern that the entire US debt may get paid off too rapidly and surpluses would have to be invested in private securities – which was considered a bad thing until Bush proposed privatizing Social Security). Those surpluses were a result not only of painful tax increases but also of a decrease in the relative size of the federal government. Federal spending as a percentage of GDP fell from 22.1% in 1992 to 18.4% in 2000.

And all this began without the support of a SINGLE Republican in Congress, as they predicted economic calamity would follow from the 1993 Budget Act.

UPDATE: George W. Bush and the Republican Congress proceeded to enact a series of tax cuts and spending increases that had the effect of nearly doubling the national debt, increasing it by over $5 trillion in eight years. Vice President Cheney declared, “Reagan proved deficits don't matter”. For the fiscal year ended September 30, 2008 (fiscal 2008), the US government for the first time in history added over a trillion dollars to the federal debt (including various special appropriations that are excluded from the budget deficit calculations that you generally see reported). Bush ran the six highest annual federal budget deficits in US history if you include the $485 billion deficit he ran in just the first three months of fiscal 2009 – leaving the country on course for another $2 trillion annual deficit. At the same time, federal spending as a percentage of GDP rose from 18.4% to almost 21%.

UPDATE 2: President Obama, faced with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, proposed an economic recovery plan consisting of a package of tax cuts and spending proposals. As the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” was eventually passed by Congress, it consisted of 35% tax cuts and the remainder spending and benefits for those hurt by the economic downturn. According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, 74 percent of the total cost of the stimulus bill will go out in the first 20 months – in the remainder of FY 2009 (which began October 1) and FY 2010. Just like the 1993 Budget Act, the Obama recovery program passed the House without a single Republican vote and passed the Senate with only three Republican votes – receiving exactly the 60 votes it needed, without a single vote to spare.

Congressional Republicans claimed the recovery program constituted “generational theft”. The comments of Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind) were typical: “It won't create jobs. It won't stimulate this economy. And it may do more harm than good." This is part of the Republican, “strategy of emphasizing its so-called bedrock principles — restrained spending, limited government and deep tax cuts.” (“GOP tries to restore image of fiscal discipline”)

And we all tried our best not to laugh.

Dredging up thoughts from the past.

Thoughts. 7/13/03 2:23 pm

Having read an article in the Economist on the fetus being the father of our infirmities in older age. This being my 50th birthday and all, it seemed to strike a cord in me. The thought that we are programmed from incidences that occur during our fetal stages and perhaps just after birth was like a lightening bolt to me. The explanation that as we are forming, decisions are being made that are not consious decisions but predicated on the health of the mother and enviromental factors. We are a compilation of our pasts. Just like decisions made today will be forces that make future events happen or more likely. These factors are like a death nell to cloning. Consider 2 cloned eggs placed in 2 different wombs under differing circumstances. One womb/mother is healthy, eats healthy & medical care is readily available. The other womb/mother is on a subsistance diet with no medical care at all. Are we going to have identical clones? No... And that is the genius of this lightening bolt. Uniqueness. Even if one were to consider using one surrogate mother and implanting her with the viable cloned eggs, one birth following the other by a 9 month term there would be differences. Health issues, diseases, stress, diet are things that would factor in the changes/decisions that the fetus would be lncurring. Nothing would be exactly as the previous/future embreyo. Cloning is not something that nature will allow.

Greed is alive and well in America...

...from TPM: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/01/greedy_and_stupid.php

 

wondering where your financial bailout money went?

Matrix revisited

I just think the whole concept of us being part of a holographic projection is mindboggling. Film at 11.

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

Ya gotta laff

A History of the Past:
'Life Reeked With Joy'
by Anders Henriksson

Possibly as an act of vengeance, a history professor--compiling, verbatim, several decades' worth of freshman papers--offers some of his students’ more striking insights into European history from the Middle Ages to the present.

History, as we know, is always bias, because human beings have to be studied by other human beings, not by independent observers of another species.

During the Middle Ages, everybody was middle aged. Church and state were co-operatic. Middle Evil society was made up of monks, lords, and surfs. It is unfortunate that we do not have a medivel European laid out on a table before us, ready for dissection. After a revival of infantile commerce slowly creeped into Europe, merchants appeared. Some were sitters and some were drifters. They roamed from town to town exposing themselves and organized big fairies in the countryside. Mideval people were violent. Murder during this period was nothing. Everybody killed someone. England fought numerously for land in France and ended up wining and losing. The Crusades were a series of military expaditions made by Christians seeking to free the holy land (the “Home Town” of Christ) from the Islams.

In the 1400 hundreds most Englishmen were perpendicular. A class of yeowls arose. Finally, Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras. It was spread from port to port by inflected rats. Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. The plague also helped the emergance of the English language as the national language of England, France and Italy.

The Middle Ages slimpared to a halt. The renasence bolted in from the blue. Life reeked with joy. Italy became robust, and more individuals felt the value of their human being. Italy, of course, was much closer to the rest of the world, thanks to northern Europe. Man was determined to civilise himself and his brothers, even if heads had to roll! It became sheik to be educated. Art was on a more associated level. Europe was full of incredable churches with great art bulging out their doors. Renaissance merchants were beautiful and almost lifelike.

The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man’s quest for ressurection above the ­not-­just-­social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century.

After the refirmation were wars both foreign and infernal. If the Spanish could gain the Netherlands they would have a stronghold throughout northern Europe which would include their posetions in Italy, Burgangy, central Europe and India thus serrounding France. The German Emperor’s lower passage was blocked by the French for years and years.

Louis XIV became King of the Sun. He gave the people food and artillery. If he didn’t like someone, he sent them to the gallows to row for the rest of their lives. Vauban was the royal minister of flirtation. In Russia the 17th century was known as the time of the bounding of the serfs. Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great. Peter filled his government with accidental people and built a new capital near the European boarder. Orthodox priests became government antennae.

The enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare wrote a book called Candy that got him into trouble with Frederick the Great. Philosophers were unknown yet, and the fundamental stake was one of religious toleration slightly confused with defeatism. France was in a very serious state. Taxation was a great drain on the state budget. The French revolution was accomplished before it happened. The revolution evolved through monarchial, republican and tolarian phases until it catapulted into Napolean. Napoleon was ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained.

History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815. Throughout the comparatively radical years 1815–1870 the western European continent was undergoing a Rampant period of economic modification. Industrialization was precipitating in England. Problems were so complexicated that in Paris, out of a city population of one million people, two million able bodies were on the loose.

Great Brittian, the USA and other European countrys had demicratic leanings. The middle class was tired and needed a rest. The old order could see the lid holding down new ideas beginning to shake. Among the goals of the chartists were universal suferage and an anal parliment. Voting was done by ballad.

A new time zone of national unification roared over the horizon. Founder of the new Italy was Cavour, an intelligent Sardine from the north. Nationalism aided Itally because nationalism is the growth of an army. We can see that nationalism succeeded for Itally because of France’s big army. Napoleon ­III-­IV mounted the French thrown. One thinks of Napoleon III as a live extension of the late, but great, Napoleon. Here too was the new Germany: loud, bold, vulgar and full of reality.

Culture fomented from Europe’s tip to its top. Richard Strauss, who was violent but methodical like his wife made him, plunged into vicious and perverse plays. Dramatized were adventures in seduction and abortion. Music reeked with reality. Wagner was master of music, and people did not forget his contribution. When he died they labled his seat “historical.” Other countries had their own artists. France had Chekhov.

World War I broke out around 1912–1914. Germany was on one side of France and Russia was on the other. At war people get killed, and then they aren’t people any more, but friends. Peace was proclaimed at Versigh, which was attended by George Loid, Primal Minister of England. President Wilson arrived with 14 pointers. In 1937 Lenin revolted Russia. Communism raged among the peasants, and the civil war “team colours” were red and white.

Germany was displaced after WWI. This gave rise to Hitler. Germany was morbidly overexcited and unbalanced. Berlin became the decadent capital, where all forms of sexual deprivations were practised. A huge ­anti-­semantic movement arose. Attractive slogans like”death to all Jews” were used by governmental groups. Hitler remilitarized the Rineland over a squirmish between Germany and France. The appeasers were blinded by the great red of the Soviets. Moosealini rested his foundations on eight million bayonets and invaded Hi Lee Salasy. Germany invaded Poland, France invaded Belgium, and Russia invaded everybody. War screeched to an end when a nukuleer explosion was dropped on Heroshima. A whole generation had been wipe out in two world wars, and their forlorne families were left to pick up the peaces.

According to Fromm, individuation began historically in medieval times. This was a period of small childhood. There is increasing experience as adolescence experiences its life development. The last stage is us.

Printer Friendly | Email to a Friend

Anders Henriksson is assistant Professor of history at Shepherd College. Born in Rochester, New York, he received a B.A. from the University of Rochester (1971), and an M.A.(1972) and a Ph.D. (1978) from the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Tsar’s Loyal Germans: The Riga German Community, Social Change, and the Nationality Question, 1855–1905 (1983).


Reprinted from Spring 1983 Wilson Quarterly
This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. For further reprint information, please contact Permissions, The Wilson Quarterly, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.
Phone:202/691-4200
E-mail:wq@wilsoncenter.org

Puppet Masters of the World Unite!

I really hope that they do not. But the article suggests that sometimes organisms are not in charge of their own destiny.

 

It would make a great SF story:

 

A parasite is found to attach itself to the human brain possibly changing the hosts brain chemistry. Once the first parasite is found then others are found. The research is inconclusive. Then it is found that the humans have a blind spot in their psyche for what ever parasite or parasites that infect them. What is the long range effects of this symbiosis? Has our intelligence improved to help us or the parasites? Are we really in charge of our destiny?

 

 

 

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2008/12/16/the-puppet-masters-medicine-chest/

 

Why do you do the things you do?

 

 

 

 

Xmas Lost and Found

'tis part of the yearly dance

we dress up

we preen

we prance

 

a time of Mass

of holy vows

a time of crass

"holy cows"

 

we buy forgiveness

purchase smiles

wrap up guilt

travel miles

 

all that said

it really being

a magic time

for children's dreams

Good Advice From Robert Reich

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/12/hybrid-vehicle-one-third-bailout-two.html

I agree that we let the financials file chapter 11 and help the Big Three.

bailout blues

The Following is from Daggatt Blog.

 

bailout blues

Yesterday was full of yet more truly boggling bailout news.

The Washington Post reported that those “fiscal conservatives” in the Bush administration managed to slip by a stealth $140 billion tax break for the financial industry in the fog on the financial bailout:

The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hilll as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.

But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.

By way of comparison, during the campaign Obama proposed spending $150 billion over ten years to help wean our economy from fossil fuels. That sounds like a lot of money, but it is the equivalent of a mere “five sentence notice” providing the financial industry with yet another tax massive break. “How are we going to PAY for all of Obama’s proposals?” reasonable people ask. Another financial industry tax break … not so much.

Another way of thinking of Obama’s decade-long transformation of America’s energy economy: The cost of bailing out ONE insurance company that is not even subject to federal regulation. It was reported yesterday that the cost of bailing out one company – ONE COMPANY – AIG has now reached $150 billion. Because of its counterparty exposure on derivatives that the federal government was prohibited from regulating:

The federal government announced on Monday an overhaul of its bailout of the insurance giant American International Group, saying it would purchase $40 billion of the company’s stock, after signs that the initial bailout was putting too much strain on the company. …

When the reorganized deal is complete, taxpayers will have invested and lent a total of $150 billion to A.I.G., the most the government has ever directed to a single private enterprise.

Some might say, if a company is too big to fail … it is too big. But that would be interfering with the “free market.”

Oh, and did I mention that HALF of the bailout funds going to the nine biggest banks – funds that were supposed to free up the credit markets and get banks lending again – will be paid out to shareholders as dividends over the next two years:

U.S. banks getting more than $163 billion from the Treasury Department for new lending are on pace to pay more than half of that sum to their shareholders, with government permission, over the next three years.

The government said it was giving banks more money so they could make more loans. Dollars paid to shareholders don't serve that purpose, but Treasury officials say that suspending quarterly dividend payments would have deterred banks from participating in the voluntary program.

Critics, including economists and members of Congress, question why banks should get government money if they already have enough money to pay dividends -- or conversely, why banks that need government money are still spending so much on
dividends.

Treasury Secretary Paulson’s primary concern throughout this crisis, apparently, is to avoid making the federal bailout too painful for bank shareholders. If the big, bad Democrats in Congress hadn’t insisted on equity in exchange for bailout funds, Paulson would have just given the banks a disguised equity infusion by overpaying for bad assets. For example, we wouldn’t want to “penalize” bank executives for the rewards they have “earned” for their brilliant risk-management strategies:

Financial giants getting injections of federal cash owed their executives more than $40 billion for past years' pay and pensions as of the end of 2007, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.

The government is seeking to rein in executive pay at banks getting federal money, and a leading congressman and a state official have demanded that some of them make clear how much they intend to pay in bonuses this year.

But overlooked in these efforts is the total size of debts that financial firms receiving taxpayer assistance previously incurred to their executives, which at some firms exceed what they owe in pensions to their entire work forces.

And you don’t even want to KNOW where the $2 TRILLION in Fed bailout funds are going. (If you are having trouble comprehending these sums, just think of it as roughly one Iraq War.) Even if you DID want to know, they aren’t telling (presumably because it might cause you to “lose confidence” in the recipients – so you can just lose confidence in the entire system instead). From Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

I feel like I’m coming off as some kind of raging populist. But, seriously, when President Obama takes office and starts talking about things like extending unemployment benefits and children’s health insurance and other economic stimulus measures, we’re going to have to endure a lot of hand-wringing over the cost of those initiatives. Because the recipients don’t have the ability to bring down the global financial system. But let’s put the cost in perspective.

No wonder Obama was elected. Chris Rock summed it up:

"[Bush has] made it hard for a white man to run for president. People are saying, 'After Bush, I'm not sure we can take another chance on a white guy."

Election Angst...

Election angst is not to be mistaken or conflated with all my other angst. The everyday angst of just getting out of bed. The angst of getting old and all the other domesticated angst that populate my life. The angst, that my life is what Socrates was referring to when he said, "an unexamined life is not worth living."

 

Election angst is the fear that what will happen will be exactly the opposite of what I hope and voted for on the national level. The Gore factor once again. The stealing of another election. That knot in my stomach that will not go away until the results tomorrow verify what course we as a country have set for ourselves. 

 

I personally do not think our nation will be able to heal itself if McCain wins. His campaign has shown us that he is not a positive force. He works from fear. His lies are as facile as Bush lies. He divides. He will not make the kind of choices that are needed to bring us back to our pre Bush world leadership role. His anger will put all of us in harms way. His choice of VP is a sample of his decision making ability.

 

Actually I am not looking for an ideologue. I don't want the dogma of party politics to shape our future. I want someone who can lead. Inspire. Has a vision that we all can buy into. To make us better as a nation, as a people, as individuals. Obama seems to have that ability. And more than anything that is the reason I have voted for for him.

 

Having voted for Obama. I now carry the election angst that my vote mean something. That we can rise again after the damage wrought by the neocons and Bush.

Why Ask Why?

I have on my wall here at work a sign with Why repeated 5 times. This is like a Quality Mantra. By asking why 5 times you can, more times than not, get to the root of a problem. I have had this conversation with Dick when we go to lunch...this root of the problem or problem solving world I have inherited makes perfect sense when dealing with business, but boring conversation. Which probably says a lot for the fact that Dick and I have this conversation at all. Plus the fact that asking why 5 times in a social setting could get you clobbered. Am thinking we all have had that 2 or 3 year old looking at us and asking why for the umpteenth time. Our frustration level rises and we end the conversation with, "Because I said so!"

Actually, am thinking that as adults we are socially engineered to except the "Because I said so!"  as the final say on much of what we do and know. Oh it is not exactly stated as "Because I said so!" but much of instruction seems to be impervious to the why line of questioning. We become so unquestioning in much of what we do that I am thinking we do not want to think. Because to question something is the first sign intelligent thought. And by example it is almost a forgone conclusion that if we get an email rant that even remotely meshes with our concept of the universe we will pass it on without even asking one why. We start to become non questioning from that first dismissive "Because I said so!" retort from our parents or other adults. 

 

I am asking myself why I am inflicting this upon you. I know it is not interesting by any stretch of the imagination. And I have rambled horribly without much thought.

 

Again Why.

 

Who knows...did not have anything of real import to say...just seem to think of weird stuff...but in this time of political hyperbole maybe we could step out of our comfort zone and ask the why of some things...

Daggatt Through the Heart

http://daggatt.blogspot.com/2008/10/moyers-interviews-soros.html

 

A snippet of Bill Moyers interview with Soros. Worth the time to read.