As someone who is a US resident but makes almost all his money in Euroland, and pays for housing in a way that is completely disconnected from oil prices, I say to you:
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
I say let's keep Bush in office until the end of time! Well at least until I can get 5 dollars for a Euro. And if the Chinese at that point will hold 60 trillion dollars worth of US debt and oil will cost 100 dollars per barrel, well the oil prices at least are my landlord's problem, it's not mine
Now I'm not sure if GWB meant to help little me by running the US economy into the ground, but so far that's what he's been doing. I happen to believe that what he is doing with the economy for sure is not good for the US or for anyone else for that matter. I imagine it's more good just for most of his political campaign sponsors. It really has benefited me too though. Out of a general concern for fiscal responsibility I probably would have voted for the other guy... but I can't vote in the US anyway, so what the fuck can I say...
By the way, things like fiscal responsibility and trade deficits USED to be something conservatives were worried about. See for instance what that raving communist Warren Buffett had to say about trade deficits in that liberal pinko magazine "Fortune":
http://www.summitglobal.com/acrobat_pdf ... oct_03.pdf
Many Americans don't even think about the fact that the Euro is a serious threat to their currency. What used to be a completely fragmented currency market is now a half-a-billion-consumer behemoth, but in the US it seems that this iceberg is not even a small blip on the radar screen. Bu there is a lot of European money invested in US markets and to me the situation is pretty ripe for a panic. Funnily enough, newsweek only last week had a story about this and it's something I've been yapping about for years. But what the hell do i know, I'm just a drunken keyboard player who blows up toilets
Regarding Iraq, to me it's clear that Saddam was bad AND that the US could have handled his toppling in a much smarter way. I don't really have much patience with conservative efforts in the US to discredit and emasculate the UN. Perhaps that's because I'm European and I think the UN is a very important idea. Perhaps it's because as an European I know pretty damned well why and when the UN was created. The UN was a direct result of the two great world wars. (That goes for the EU as well by the way, which grew out of the coal-steel union which was a direct result of ideas to try to prevent further global world wars riding on the industrial revolution)
Regarding war in general I would just like to give a quote:
Who said that, Noam Chomsky or someone?? Karl Marx? Ward Churchill? John Lennon??Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Nope, it was actually Dwight D. Eisenhower, one American who in my opinion really should know what he was talking about, and who incidentally also had his finger heavily in the pie at the creation of the UN.
And from Eisenhower's farewell address, Jan 17, 1961:
and one more good one:Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, 3.5 million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Well, that's how Eisenhower felt. But I guess maybe he was some sort of pinko pacifistI hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
. What would he have known about war that eg. Karl Rove doesn't...I say it again: Iraq seems to be at least heading the right way. Next time, if there is a next time, for god's sake let's listen to what the Germans have to say. They know how starting a war can go horribly, horribly wrong. And let's not make the UN's job more difficult than it already is.
. Buffet, the second richest man in the world, and a native of Omaha. Plus, he supported Kerry and was his financial advisor during Kerry's campaign. He hated BUsh with a passion.
