Bush FLIP-FLOPS on North Korea!

"We don't negotiate with evil," the shrub once said.

It's hard to imagine a bigger flip-flop than what happened this week. After years of criticizing Clinton for being soft (i.e. using diplomacy) on North Korea, particularly bribing NK with fuel oil to stop their nuke activity, Bush signed an agreement this week making THE SAME DEAL.

The Bushies have blasted Clinton's 1994 agreement as a disaster and a failure. Hmmm, maybe there's something to this. If anyone knows what a disastrous and failed policy should look like, it's the Bush administration...

Bush budget is pure militarism.

Militarism is growing in America. The recently proposed budget by Bush is proof positive. Bush is asking for $235 billion over the next two years to fund his manufactured wars. He is also asking for permanent increases in troop levels.

And how does he intend to pay for it? Cutting necessary programs to the bone.

We are the sole superpower in the world. Our military is already second to none (when used to fight a war; not so great at babysitting). The past five years have proven that our only shortcomings are in our decision-making. We don't need more troops. We need better leaders.

We were promised this war would pay for itself? So where's all that money going...?

Beware the growing militarism. Heed Eisenhower's warning about the growing military-industrial complex. Heed Orwell's warnings in 1984. They have come true.

The Marriage War.

A Washington group is using a peculiar legal tactic to defeat other restrictive laws on marriage by taking those restrictions to their logical ends. If marriage exists solely for procreation, then the legality of a marriage should be contingent upon that condition. And so, this group has proposed a state initiative to invalidate marriages that don't produce offspring. No kids = no marriage.

It won't pass, but it does make a point. If gays can't marry because marriage is for procreation, then that must legally apply to everybody. Old people, infertile people, and people who want each other but not kids must also be forbidden the sacred bond of matrimony.

The Crime of Truth and Common Sense.

Bush's big idea of a surge in Iraq has been condemned as a useless gesture by pretty much everybody outside of the White House and its blind loyalists in the GOP. Even generals think it is a waste of time. So why does the media continue to allow the GOP loyalists to characterize critics as "back-stabbers" against our soldiers?

Is no one allowed to say "that plan is bad"?

At what point did America become the Soviet Union...?

(If there was one problem with Soviet politics, it was the inability of officials to speak freely. The country ran on bad information for decades because nobody could say any policy was flawed. Sound familiar?)

They might be illegal, but they are not uninvited.

I can only wish that America would discuss the immigration problem realistically. Thus far, we only see rantings and ravings about unsecure borders and stolen jobs. These pleas to emotion help keep up TV ratings, but they don't explain why this problem is so difficult to solve.

1. CRIMINAL EMPLOYERS -- As long as American businesses get away with hiring illegals, they will continue to come here.

2. MEXICO'S IMMIGRATION PROBLEM -- Unbeknownst to many Americans, Mexico is itself experiencing this exact same problem. Their southern border is being flooded by South and Central Americans looking for a better way of life. This is why Mexico doesn't care about the U.S. border issue. They NEED for some of their people to leave the country.

3. NAFTA -- Companies have moved to Mexico because they want to pay the lowest wage possible. These new jobs attracted workers from even poorer nations south of Mexico. So, instead of raising Mexico's standard of living (as we were promised by Clinton and the GOP), it has lowered it. Because whatever low standard of living the Mexicans would accept, the Guatemalans and Hondurans would be happy to accept even lower. This has pushed southern Mexicans into the north, and northern Mexicans into America.

4. POLITICIANS -- Can anyone win the Presidency by losing California, Texas, and Florida (and probably every other southern border state)? That's the price for trying to launch an effective effort to catch and throw out the illegals. You throw out Juan, leaving his American-citizen child to a foster home, and all of Juan's American-citizen relatives will vote against you. As well as all the other sympathetic Latino-Americans.

5. PUBLIC SERVICES -- It's easy to agree that illegals shouldn't be able to come here and live off the fat of our social safety net. But officials would have a major crisis on their hands if they had to contain entire neighborhoods full of uneducated starving people. Ever see "Escape From New York"? Just add Spanish. Imagine that next door, but without the massive retaining wall.

This problem is NOT going away. And no amount of "tough talk" is going to solve it. We might vote for candidates who preach shutting down the border, but that will only make the ladders taller and the tunnels deeper. The forces inside America and Mexico who want those illegals here are far more powerful than the public's demand to keep them out. The solution begins and ends with addressing those forces.

The rest is just TV theater.

KKK rears its ugly head again.

I imagine this resurgence began something like this...

KKKurt: Man, America sucks. We're not allowed to hate anybody anymore.

KKKen: Can't hate the jews. Can't hate the negros. Can't hate the homos...

KKKurt: If I don't get to publicly hate somebody soon, I'm gonna quit shaving my head.

KKKen: (Puts in DVD of Gangs of New York) I got it! Let's go old-school! We can hate the immigrants! America's already primed for a big ol' hate on immigrants--especially Mexicans!

KKKurt: Oh yeah, baby! We're back in business!

Minimum Wage

The GOP surprised me. They did not pass their own wage hike before being ousted by last year's elections. I expected them to steal the Democrats' thunder, and also undermine the cause by passing a flawed bill. But they let their term expire and now the Dems will take the credit.

One thing didn't change, however. The GOP in the Senate have attached tax cuts for the rich and now a Joint Committee (House and Senate) will have to reconcile the two bills. I don't expect the Minimum Wage bill to hit the President's desk without some kind of payoff to the rich.

New posts again

After dropping out for awhile, I have a few things to say again. I'd love to do this blog regularly, but I'm a feast-or-famine kind of guy. So I'll just be posting when the mood strikes me (or when I have time).