Wednesday, January 13, 2010

$30 Billion for Afghanistan, Nothing for California

It is a wacky world. People who are better than me at things like fixing cards and punching into 9 to 5 jobs and target practice believe that President Obama is a Moslem, or a communist, or was not born in the United States. Nothing could pursuade them otherwise.

Barack Obama is asking for another $30 billion or so for the war in Afghanistan. Which will force the Taliban, which is for the most part the people of Afghanistan, to retreat into rural areas, and patiently wait for the patience of the American taxpayer to run out.

No federal money for California to help with its budget deficit, however. Not that CA deserves the money. Our collective stupidity, borrowing money to buy houses at bubble prices, does deserve some punishment. What better punishment that cutting government services to the homeless right when so many formerly middle class people have become homeless? But what with Obamaville homeless encampments popping up all over the state, real estate is becoming scarce again.

There's been so much news lately that is self-satirical one pauses to even comment on it. The Catholic Church, under the Nazi-youth Pope Benedict, on the one hand is recruiting married priests from the Church of England. On the other hand, it is threatening to burn married priests in Africa at the stake. That is only the slightest of exagerations: it is truly threatening to use its influence with African governments to have members of a new break-away priest-marrying Catholic splinter church put in jail.

Throw a good idea into a pack of jackals, and all you get is some less hungry jackals. But then the jackals reproduce and are hungrier, and more dangerous, than ever. That is how I feel about Congress and health care reform. They scrapped almost every good idea and came up with this: all Americans will be forced to buy private insurance from predatory private insurance companies with no real government oversight. The law will be far more complex, of course, making it a sort of full-employment act for lawyers, but that is the meat in the stew.

$30 billion for war in Afghanistan. Hell, much as I hate them, I'd rather it go to bonuses for banking executives. At least the money would stay in the U.S. It might even trickle down to the rest of us.

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