Democracy's cost

The elections and the campaign taught me two important lessons:

• Lincoln was right— you can fool most people some of the time.

• So why do I have to suffer from the foolishness of others?

Because that is the price that we have to pay for living in a democracy.

11/16/2004 (SS)

Once again, Churchill was right

The long-awaited report by Gen. David H. Petraeus — while not giving enough credit to the input and editing performed by the White House staff— recommends, among other things, reducing the number and involvement of our ground troops in Iraq.

It is too little and too late in the game. But it proves the wisdom and foresight of Winston Churchill, who remarked that "Americans always try to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else."

September 16, 2007 (SS)

Helping Iraq wii boost our economy

This is a note to the plurality of the American electorate that voted against George W. Bush because they thought he was too simple-minded: Think again.

Our appointed president just came out with a brilliant plan to get the American economy moving. He is going to provide the Iraqi people (but not the American public) with comprehensive and free medical care. This is going to revive one of the hardest-hit American sectors: the airline industry.

How? Very simple. All of us who cannot afford to pay for expensive medical care will hop on a plane and go to Iraq and receive free treatment (an airline ticket being less expensive than a day's stay at the hospital). On the way back we will stop in Canada for less expensive drugs.

The airlines will be able to compensate their CEOs with obscene bonuses, and if they spend some of it, they will help the rest of the economy to recover.

Brilliant.

And you thought that the "compassionate conservative" did not know how to run a country and contribute to the global economy.

April 30, 2003 (SS)

Republican Tax Cuts

Olympia Snowe's op-ed (4/29) citing Ronald Reagan Republican credo as "restraining government spending" and "tax reduction" made me wonder why the Republicans are so fixated on reducing taxes to the very rich, but looking at the states where the GOP has a majority in the legislature and an elected governor may provide an answer. Is it possible that the "tax cut" is the first step in a multi step process designed to perpetuate Republican power on state and national elective office? Once the flow of income to the state and national treasuries is diminished, the inescapable next step is to cut services provided by the government, and the first casualty, usually, is education.

The five states that in 2006 had both a Republican Governor and a Republican legislature (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Alaska) are 50th, 47th, 31st, 28th and 10th in spending per pupil for education. The Republicans seem to believe that an educated electorate is not going to vote for them, and they may be right.

The Republican party's propaganda, whether coming from their elected officials, or broadcast by bombastic radio and television persons, is geared primarily towards the less affluent and less educated citizens. By constant repetition of one-sided stories, lies and half-truth, and by calling their opponents "elitist" and "socialist" and worse, they create a divisive atmosphere and foster hatred in this country.

There used to be a TV commercial with the tag line "an educated consumer is our best customer." The Republican party turned it around to "the ill educated citizen is our best voter."

A Policy of Murder

I thought that no atrocity could top the senseless slaughter of Innocent bus travelers by murderous Arab terrorists until I read the mindless letter by Alfred M. Lilienthal (April 8) that seeks to justify It. To say that the victims could have been other than Jews and that their fate would have been the same is surely speculative considering that the victims of that carnage were all Jews.

It requires a twisted mind to justify a policy of murder aimed solely at Innocent civilians, as Mr. Lilienthal does, but to base his advocacy on the poor living conditions in the refugee camps is to ignore the horrendous squandering of enormous amounts of money by the desert sheiks. Using Mr. Lilienthal's could-have^ would-have logic, if only a small fraction of that sum, or the monies donated so freely to the perpetrators of terror by the same oil monarchs, would have been diverted to benefit the refugees—that humanitarian problem could have been solved by resettlement. But that, of course, was not part 'of the Arab scheme .that sought to perpetuate the misery for political ends.

The final travesty is Mr. Lilienthal's assertion that Judaism is nothing but a religious grouping and advancing the interests of a "foreign" state paves the way for the' ultimate disaster. The fallacy of this argument is rather obvious to anyone even slightly acquainted with the Bible or Jewish history. It totally ignores the political nature of the Jewish kingdoms and the series of protracted wars waged by the Jewish people against the mightiest empires of their times—from the Babylonian through the Greek, Roman and British—to preserve and regain their political independence and freedom.

To argue, as Mr. Lilienthal does, that the American Jews do not have the right to advance their political arguments in behalf of their brethren is worse than advocating second-class citizenship for the Jewish community; it is denying it altogether.

April 8, 1978 (NYT)

Giuliani

Poor Rudy [Giuliani]. He was never a giant, but first, The New York Times cut him down to a minimal size and then Maureen Dowd gave him her usual acid bath.

My wife, our children and myself read with enjoyment Maureen Dowd's columns. We especially enjoy the scathing ones featuring
George W. and his gang of incompetent sycophants.

After years of following her in print, we have only one question: Is there a human being on this planet that she does not dislike?

2/2/2008 (SS)