I'm Sorry, Mr. Kristof

My wife took a photograph of a car with a back window decal grieving the loss of Joey Bonk, 22 years old, presumably in Iraq. See

http://photos.yahoo.com/librespondent

click on the album icon, then click on the picture icon

Joey could have been our grandson. I took a few minutes to think how I would feel if Joey had been our grandson.

I'm sorry, Mr. Kristof. I agree with you. But my first priority is to try to do something about the needless killing of youngsters like Joey Bonk.

In a post I read yesterday, a Vietnam Veteran asked how high will the count have to go, 5,000, 10,000 American dead in Iraq before George Bush admits his mistake and brings our troops back home. I had a lot trouble dealing with that question.

Mr. Kristof, I can't deal with your question at all. I'm really sorry.

Why Are We In Iraq?

Yo, cantab buddy, are you there?

I'm waiting to find out why we are still in Iraq. I keep asking this question and I'm not getting a whole lot of answers.

You were my last hope, what with your "cantab" education and all.

I'm beginning to think that the answer is the one that flashed across my screen a little while ago . . .

We are in Iraq for the oil.

We are in Iraq so Americans can continue to drive their gas-guzzlers and not pay more $100 for a high-test fill-up. Wow. What a reason to give 1600 families for the loss of their loved one. What a reason to give to thousands of Americans who have lost limbs, eyesight, emotional well-being.

What a reason to give to service people whose marriages broke up because of extended tours.

In 1954, I saw this on TV, the Army lawyer turned to Senator Joe McCarthy and said in a grieved voice: "At long last, sir, have you no decency? Have you no decency?"

I ask you now cantab and other defenders of Bush: "Have you no decency? At long last, have you no decency?"

1600 Dead For What?

“1600 Americans dead for what?

Thousands of Americans injured for what?

I'll say it . . . "to help George W. Bush to get re-elected."

God, no. I can't bear to look at it that way. Their sacrifice was not for Bush, in my opinion. Yes, there was cynical political intention in sending troops to die and timing it for an election. Yes, on that. But, no, those who have died, enlisted with pride. They showed their new uniforms to their parents and their brothers and sisters with pride. And they served America with courage and honor. Those are things of great value. They have absolutely not died for nothing."

I admire the way you write. It's almost poetic. What's missing is the boots-on-ground experience.

Soldiers go into combat because they have been trained to follow orders, no matter what. Idealism exists only very early in the process. Soldiers fight and continue to fight because they follow orders and they feel they owe it to their fellow soldiers.

Responsibility is with the commander-in-chief, the only elected official in the whole command structure. All others, from four star general, to private are following orders.

When I ask "Why are we fighting in Iraq?" I am not asking about the idealism of the soldiers, I'm asking why is President George W. Bush keeping those fine, wonderful people (with whom I personally identify) in harm's way in Iraq?

The only answer I have received is that we are there for the oil.

So, now we have the whole story. Bush started the war to help himself get re-elected. We are continuing to fight because Bush wants to get the Iraqi oil so he and his friends can make a lot of profit on selling it at $50 a barrel. This is credible because it is consistent with all the rest of Bush's behavior.

My deepest thanks to all participants in this forum for helping me in reaching these conclusions.

In case I have misinterpreted any of your comments, please correct me.

The Columnists

I have been reading and posting in these Forums for a few weeks and I have some observations that I would like to share.

There seem to be three types of posters here. For convenience, I will label and describe them (us) briefly.

1. The passionate patriots. These are the people who love the US, in spite of all the warts and zits on Lady Liberty's face. They yearn to improve our country in every way. They (we) tend to be more articulate in our posts. We show a higher level of knowledge and logical thinking. We like the columns of Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman. We miss Maureen Dowd. We like Frank Rich's writing, too. We do not miss William Safire. We waver in our regard for Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof. We don't really accept that Brooks and Tierney exist only to deflect accusations of lack of balance on the Op-Ed page.

2. The knee-jerk Bush defenders. They express unstinting support for the Iraq war. They do not question any of Bush's lies, no matter how preposterous. They strongly believe that US fighting in Iraq keeps the terrorists from striking us here in the US. They insult their opponents freely. They use the term "liberal" as synonymous with imbecile, thug, wimp, impotent.

3. The irrelevants. They do not read the columns. Their posts deal with all kinds of stuff. They waste our time.

Karl Marx's Ideas

"All Marx ideas have been eradicated, haven't they?"

Answer: Yes and No

No, because as long as people talk or write about the ideas, the ideas exist, in other words, not eradicated.

Yes, because they have been discredited, that is proven to be of no value, or even worse dangerous.

Marx's idea, the theory of "surplus value" based on observation of British industry in the late 1800's was that:

A. Two classes of people existed: the workers in the factories and the owners of factories, the capitalists.

B. The two classes had unequal power.

C. The capitalists had the power to set wages. They set the wages at the lowest level possible - just enough to enable the workers to work. Never mind health, safety or any enjoyment.

D. The capitalists sold their products at whatever prices they could get. The difference between what the capitalists received and what they paid out in wages, Marx called “surplus value.”

E. Marx considered this to be an unstable condition. Since the workers outnumbered the capitalists, they would rise in revolution, seize the means of production, hang the capitalists and and establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat."

F. Since this new form of government would be controlled by the working class and all the capitalists would be dead and gone, the "surplus value" would be distributed to the only class that was left, the working class. A new world would be created, a "classless" society. Prosperity, peace and happiness forever. Communism, as the new system was called would improve the fate of the common man.

As a practical idea this was utterly without merit because if you promote workers into control of the dictatorship of the proletariat, they act the same as the previous bosses: they grab the “surplus value” and distribute it to themselves, their friends, their relatives and worst of all, to their all powerful police. The workers continue to get what they got before, subsistence wages. Not only that, but they lose whatever political freedom they may have had. In the capitalist states, in late 19th century Europe, in Britain, France and Germany there were small stirrings of democracy. Some progress in political freedom was occurring.

As a propaganda tool Communism was of enormous value. As long as workers suffered at subsistence wages, the prospect of seizing power from the owners was intoxicating.

Communism, as practiced in Europe: Russia, East Germany, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, has been proven to be a disaster. Poverty, concentration camps, executions have been imposed on workers and all who dared to challenge the authority of the totalitarian bosses.

The ideas of Karl Marx are totally discredited. They have been consigned to the garbage dumps of history. Gone, but obviously not forgotten as David Brooks shows us.

In China, Mao tse Dung used Communism as a propaganda tool for seizing power. A brief review of Mao’s Communism is presented on page 2 of the first section of yesterday’s NYTimes. It’s not pretty. Present day Chinese Communist bosses have kept the corrupt and police aspects of Communism but have pretty much embraced capitalism for organizing the economic sphere.

Max Profits = Max Deaths

About 2 years ago, the NYTimes Magazine published a long detailed article about the design and building of the WTC.

The net of it was that the landlord wanted to max out the square feet of rentable floor space to max out the rent collections.

That translated into very tall buildings with no setbacks. Also, no thick columns to give strength to the structure.

So what they got was flimsy construction. Flimsy like in: gauzy, gossamer, inadequate, infirm.

The article was accompanied by a photograph taken at sunset (probably from a helicopter) with the sun shining through, that's right through, the two buildings.

The engineers considered a hit by an airplane - a Boeing 707, the biggest commercial airliner at the time. Did anyone ask Boeing what they were designing at the time? The article didn't say.

So they maxed out the profit. They also maxed out the deaths. Why should the landlord care? The insurance companies paid for the buildings and the Federal Government paid for the deaths.

Fighting In Iraq Protects Us At Home (?)

"He (Bush) told us we would be fighting the terrorists on their soil, to keep from having to fight them on ours, and he was right..."

Explain to me please how killing Iraqis protects us here. Why would people who want to harm us here fight in Iraq where they can get killed?

Why don't they come to the US, buy some explosives and blow up chemical storage tanks and railroad cars in Texas and northern New Jersey? (Do you remember Bhopal in India? 20,000 dead and injured and that was an accident). Intentional, well-placed explosions could kill and maim millions of people in the US. George Bush has done nothing, I repeat nothing to protect us from that danger.

Now, please try again to explain to me why we are fighting in Iraq. Please put my name, lwiner, in the title to make sure that the search engine does not miss your answer.

Also, please keep in mind that no one in the Bush Administration is using the argument you used any more. In fact, none of them is talking about the Iraq war at all. They do talk about more "important" matters: stem cells, Mr. Abbas, poppies in Afghanistan, Korans in the toilet, private retirement accounts, crappy judges and appointing a madman as Ambassador to the UN.

Thank you, tradewind111. I appreciate your taking the time.

By the way, there are no names on my ignore list. All answers will get through.

The First Meaningful Reply & My Rebuttal

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tradewind111, You were replying to my post?

"He (Bush) told us we would be fighting the terrorists on their soil, to keep from having to fight them on ours, and he was right..."

Explain to me please how killing Iraqis protects us here. Why would people who want to harm us here fight in Iraq where they can get killed?

Why don't they come to the US, buy some explosives and blow up chemical storage tanks and railroad cars in Texas and northern New Jersey? (Do you remember Bhopal in India? 20,000 dead and injured and that was an accident). Intentional, well-placed explosions could kill and maim millions of people in the US. George Bush has done nothing, I repeat nothing to protect us from that danger.

Now, please try again to explain to me why we are fighting in Iraq. Please put my name, lwiner, in the title to make sure that the search engine does not miss your answer.

Also, please keep in mind that no one in the Bush Administration is using the argument you used any more. In fact, none of them is talking about the Iraq war at all. They do talk about more "important" matters: stem cells, Mr. Abbas, poppies in Afghanistan, Korans in the toilet, private retirement accounts, crappy judges and appointing a madman as Ambassador to the UN.

Thank you, tradewind111. I appreciate your taking the time.

By the way, there are no names on my ignore list. All answers will get through.

Scholarships for All Who Need Them

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Higher education should be free to all students who want to learn. It's best for the students and very definitely best for the country. All that would take is scholarships for all who are willing and capable of working hard at learning. Initially, this would cost lots of money.

Write letters to George Bush and the Republican leaders of Congress. Tell the Republican politicians this would vastly increase the wealth and well-being of the whole country.

I base my proposal on the experience we had with the G.I. Bill of Rights after World War II. The US Government subsidized higher education. I believe that the intention was to express gratitude to the veterans and mainly to keep them busy. There was a fear after the armistices were signed that the economy would fall back into the pre-war depression and massive unemployment.

The results exceeded all expectations. The massive investment in educating millions of poor and low income people resulted in tremendous increase in personal income and consequent tax collections. The Government's investment was paid back many times over. The nation experienced decades of economic expansion and the United States became a super super power. It was all derived from intellectual capital.
The U.S. simply had many more smart superbly educated (in all fields) people than any other country - it’s that simple.

Somehow, that lesson has been forgotten and our edge is slipping. Tuition is increasing at public and private colleges and universities and incomes, adjusted for inflation, are declining. Finding the money for college and graduate school is becoming more and more difficult for all except members of the upper middle and upper class.

All that I was advocating was that the Federal Government should make a super-smart business decision. Provide scholarships to intelligent, motivated sons and daughters of poor and working class and middle class parents so that they may attend college and graduate schools. Just as after WW II, these youngsters would vastly increase their earnings and pay back the Government's investment by paying much more in income tax than they would have if they only had a high school education.

Disclosure: There was a G.I. Bill during and after the Korean War and I was a beneficiary. I was already a college graduate so I used the Government money to help me with graduate school. The Government paid me about $5,000 in subsidizing my MBA. I can attribute a lifetime increase in income of about $500,000, very conservatively. Assuming a 20% marginal tax rate, the Government got back $100,000 on a $5,000 investment. That’s a rate of return of 30% a year for 43 years. The Government made a brilliant decision.

Winning the war on terrorism

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I see a lot of posts on this Forum and others that casually mention the goodness of winning the war on terrorism and/or the badness of losing the war on terrorism.

At the risk of boring fellow Forum-ites, allow me to reminisce.

I remember our country fighting a war on Communism in Viet Nam. Nine years of war. 58,000 Americans dead. 300,000 Americans injured. 2 million Vietnamese dead. We did not win that war.

Russian Communism died because of its inefficiency. Chinese Communism is prospering, for the time being. We no longer feel threatened by Communism.

We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe a trillion by now fighting the War on Drugs. There is no measurable effect.

Our people are dying and killing and torturing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanomo. This is explained to us as the War on Terrorism.

At home, the last terrorist attack was 3.5 years ago. Our Republican Administration got re-elected by telling us to be afraid.

Our Republican Administration has done nothing, I repeat nothing to protect us from the possibility of terrorists blowing up chlorine tanks in Texas, as explained in yesterday's editorial. (Does Bhopal mean anything to anyone out there? 20,000 dead or injured and that was an accident.)

Our Republican Administration and their supporters in this Forum say that they are protecting us by fighting the terrorists in Iraq. Huh? The 9/11 terrorists came from Arabia, not Iraq.

Furthermore, if the terrorists in Iraq wanted to harm us here, why are they in Iraq, where they could get killed. Why don't they enter the U.S., buy some explosives and blow up a few chemical plants in northern New Jersey on a cold winter day when the wind is blowing West to East at 22 miles an hour? Wall Street would become a graveyard.

George Bush has never told us how we will know that we won the war on terrorism. At the beginning, he told he would get Osama ben Ladin, dead or alive. Then Bush lost interest in Osama. He got hot on WMD's in Iraq and launched a war. No WMD's? That's ok. We're fighting to bring democracy to the Iraqi people. Did anybody ask them? Do the Sunnis want democracy? They don't act like it. They stayed out of the voting and now they're killing everybody else.

Can any of the supporters of the Bush war on terrorism clarify this unholy mess? Caution: it won't be easy. Bush, with all his helpers has given up on explaining what we're doing in Iraq. He's dedicating all his attention to stem cells, Mr. Abbas, poppies in Afghanistan, Korans in the toilet, private retirement accounts, crappy judges and appointing a madman as Ambassador to the UN. The Iraq mess just isn't on his front burner anymore. Bush has clearly given up.

I’m calling on all Bush-lovers. Clarify all this. If you insult me, if you call me bad things, make fun of my name, all that means is that you don't know the answer either. Go, Bushites, start explaining!

To Sum Up

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People are wondering how is it that a Harvard Business School graduate is so utterly incompetent. Didn't they teach him anything at HBS? Is Harvard's reputation undeserved?

My take on it is that HBS made a big mistake in admitting George W. Bush. They could have corrected it by dismissing him but chose not to. Does this tarnish Harvard's reputation? If this were a just world, it would.

And Another Exchange About Bush and HBS

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"The Harvard Business School chose to admit George W. Bush and to award him an MBA.

Therefore, as fine a university as Harvard may be, he is their certified product, and they are as responsible for his credentials as for any of their more illustrious graduates.

It is generous of you to defend the HBS, but they still must take credit (or discredit) for all their graduates."

My reply:

I agree with you 100%.

My post was in reply to a comment like "I wonder what they teach at the Harvard Business School." meaning are all HBS graduates as clueless as President Bush?

I was saying that their teaching is as good as it gets in the field of business. Where they erred was in admitting, keeping and graduating George W. Bush. Oh, yeah they're responsible.

Reply to Another Post About HBS

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"I don't regard Harvard as some sacred cow of education. What is unjust is the rise in student tuition across the spectrum of private and public universities/colleges in the USA that will certainly impact the middle class."

Harvard is not a sacred cow. The best thing about Harvard and the other top schools is the opportunity to study with other top students. A lot can be learned through such experiences.

Also the teachers do not have to dumb down their teaching for students who are having trouble keeping up because nobody is having trouble keeping up.

Regarding your second point, I agree with you completely. Higher education should be free to all students who want to learn. It's best for the students and very definitely best for the country. All that would take is scholarships for all who are willing and capable of working hard at learning. Lots of money.

Write letters to George Bush and the Republican leaders of Congress. Suggest that they impose property taxes on all those with net worth over $5 million. Pay out the money collected to students who need the money to attend college and graduate school. Tell the Republican politicians this would vastly increase the wealth and well-being of the whole country.

Good luck!

What Do They Teach at the Harvard Business School?

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This is my answer to this issue raised by another participant in theThomas Friedman Forum:

"I wonder what exactly the Harvard Business School teaches its aspiring managers."

First, a disclosure: I do not teach at HBS, but I have had teachers who were HBS graduates and I have spent many years teaching MBAs using HBS case studies.

What do they teach at HBS? They try to teach very talented and motivated young people to be superb managers. This includes careful acquisition of valid information, unbiased, logical and creative decison-making and determined implementation of the best strategies.

Which of the items listed above are demonstrated President Bush? Only determined implementation. He deserves "F" grades on all the others.

Why? Because George W. Bush was not a "very talented and motivated" young man at the time he was admitted. He was lazy and ignorant. He was admitted only because of his family connections.

So, they admitted him and to avoid embarrassment, they kept him and gave him a degree. He learned very little. He learned to strut and present a confident front. But he was and continues to be an empty suit with antisocial tendencies.

The Harvard Business School is an excellent school. The Admissions Committee made a mistake in admitting George W. Bush. The professors and administrators at HBS could have done the country a favor by expelling him during his first year there. Their failure to do so shows the huge cost of excessive permissiveness.

Terrorist Attack of Chemical Plants

Editorial page of NYTimes:

"May 26, 2005
A Lawmaker Works, Oddly Enough, to Keep His Voters' Backyards Dangerous
By ADAM COHEN

Dallas

It is no surprise, given the close ties between industry and regulators in Washington these days, that Joe Barton is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Mr. Barton, a Texas Republican, is such an energy industry loyalist - and so soft on air pollution - that his hometown paper dubbed him "Smokey Joe." He has regularly helped his industry friends by weakening environmental laws and handing out tax breaks. But now he seems poised to do something far more disturbing: block legislation to secure chemical plants against terrorist attacks.

Chemical plants are probably the nation's greatest vulnerability. President Bush's former deputy homeland security adviser, Richard Falkenrath, told Congress last month that they stand "alone as uniquely deadly, pervasive and susceptible to terrorist attack." The death toll from a chemical plant attack could easily outstrip 9/11. The Department of Homeland Security has warned that a single chlorine tank explosion could kill 17,500 people.

Two of the country's most dangerous chemical facilities, which threaten more than one million people, are in Dallas, just outside Mr. Barton's district."

My post on the Forum:

I have two kinds of questions.

Regarding Texas chemical industry resistance to protecting the chemical plants from terrorists.

In case of attack, how far would the toxic clouds spread? Aren't the managers and executives at risk also? How far away from plants do they live? How far away are their children's schools? I have some notion what the the answers are, but I would like to see some data.


Regarding exposure of New York City to terrorist attacks on the chemical plants in New Jersey, across the Hudson River.

The exposure must be potentially devastating, especially considering that strong winds blow from the West most of the Winter. In self-interest, why isn't the NY Times writing about this danger, repeatedly until strong preventive measures are implemented? Why is our Mayor going bonkers over a stadium instead of protecting us? This is a scandal of immeasurable proportions.

Friedman's column May 25,2005

We Have Serious Problems

Reading the Friedman column and the posts, three conclusions emerge:

1. We, the people of the U.S.A. have have some very serious problems.

2. There's plenty of blame: Bush, Cheney, the multi-nationals, the NY Times, Thomas Friedman, American voters, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and a few others.
Reminds me of the old Pogo cartoon aphorism:"We have met the enemy and he is us."

3. No one has yet has made a serious attempt to figure out what is to be done.

I regret to have to say that I, personally, do not have the slightest idea of what needs to be done. It may be as little as "nothing at all - the pendulum will swing and things will get better." Or, it may be as much as "sell all your US Dollar denominated assets and move to India or China."

I call on contributors to this Forum to put forth some ideas on what needs to be done.
I promise not to flame anyone.

Pulling Our Troops Out Is The Best Strategy

In Iraq, the Sunnis want the US out so they can exploit the Kurds and Shiites, just like they did under Saddam Hussein. The Sunnis do not like to commit suicide, so they import religious fanatics from Arabia, fill their heads with religious garbage and send them out to commit murder and mayhem.

In Iraq the terrorism, or insurgency will continue until one of two things happens: the Sunnis achieve their goal and set up another Saddam Hussein with the brutal repression of Kurds and Shiites or all the ambitious Sunnis are killed. Bush tried the second strategy in Faluja and it had no effect. It would take killing on the scale of genocide to repress the Sunnis.

What should we do? We should accept reality: we are not doing any good in Iraq because we are insisting on a unified Iraq. We are helping no one and we are suffering great losses ourselves. We should leave. Bring our troops home. Save their lives. Protect them from grievous injuries. Reduce our budgetary deficit.

What will happen in Iraq after we leave? The Shiites will get a lot of help from Iran and fight off the Sunnis. The Kurds, with our help (only weapons and ammunition, no US troops) will also fight off the Sunnis. The Sunnis will be forced to work for a living instead of living off the Kurds and Shiites.

Does anyone have a better idea?

On Abortion

If the Supreme Court were to repeal Roe v. Wade that in itself would not prohibit abortions.

The only outcome would be that state legislatures could pass laws that governors could sign that would criminalize all abortions, even in the first trimester.

Legislators and governors are elected officials. If they passed such laws, they would face the fury of most of the female voters and more than half of the male voters. Why would they want to do that?

Answer: they wouldn't.

Conclusion: this is a bogus issue and David Brooks is a bogus columnist, but he sure got us stirred up.

It is extremely likely that the majority of women who are sexually active, married or not, even if they use contraceptives, correctly and consistently, will experience two or three unplanned pregnancies over a lifetime.

What do they do? Some have the unplanned children. Many more have abortions.

Look at any married couples of twenty to thirty years standing who have only one or two children and I'd be willing to bet you are looking at women who have had two or three abortions.

Yeah, examine the medical histories (if you could) of the wives of all the antiabortion loudmouths and the loudmouths would quickly shut up.

Women know all this and they're pretty quiet on this issue. All the noise is being made by men.

As I said in a previous post, my plumber told me: "If men could get pregnant, Walmart would be offering discount abortions."

Later, in response to rrgolden0

Let me cite the paragraph that I want to comment on.

"I think your figures are incorrect. I have been married for 38 years, have two planned-for and wanted children and had no need for abortions. A lot of women (me included) used/use failsafe backup methods of preventing conception (for a while at least I used the pill AND foam). Birth control methods are more reliable than you seem to think (provided they are used correctly and faithfully). It IS possible to prevent conception in all but a few cases of accident or failure of method. However, women who have neither the emotional resources nor the ability to say no to pressures of men (or are deficient in impulse control) should not be forced to have babies."

The examples you cite are at the extremes: the super careful and the careless. In the big middle (probably two thirds of married women) are those who use one birth control method. Among this large group unplanned pregnancies are not uncommon because the best contraceptives are only about 98% effective. These women are not super careful or careless, they're just average people.

You also say that women who have unplanned pregnancies should not be forced to have babies. In the absence of legal abortions, most of them would not have babies. The wealthy ones would travel to another country and would have a safe, legal abortion and the poor ones would have a risky illegal abortion. That's the way it used to be before Roe v. Wade.

The people who want to abolish Roe v. Wade are the worst kind of hypocrites. They know that if abortions are criminalized, thousands of poor women will die as a result of botched illegal abortions. The "pro-lifers" don't care about these women's lives at all.

The similarity of Iraq to Viet Nam is Increasing, Day by Day

This is in response to Tierney’s column on May 10, suggesting that media stop reporting the killings in Iraq.

Both wars were sold to the American public by Presidential lying. In Iraq it was the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction and conspiracy between Saddam Hussein and Osama ben Ladin. In Viet Nam it was the Gulf of Tonkin attack. Neither had any basis in reality.

The stated purpose of both wars was to combat ideas, communism in Viet Nam and terrorism in Iraq. In both instances we and our allies were and are incapable of defeating a highly effective but invisible human enemy, the Viet Cong in Viet Nam and the insurgents in Iraq.

In both wars the human enemy was willing to suffer great losses and continue fighting. In Viet Nam we had body counts. In Iraq, the war is becoming a war of body counts.

In both instances, the President promoted and continued to promote the concept of persisting in a hopeless war.

In both wars, the American public did not have a clear idea of what the war was about and what would constitute victory over Communism or terrorism. In both wars the public displayed American flags and signs reading: God Bless America and Support Our Troops. Nobody could define what those signs meant.

In both wars, the lying President had numerous allies willing attack viciously anyone who opposed the killing and destruction.

The two important differences are are that:

1. Bush is a more effective demagogue than Johnson.

2. On the domestic policy side, Johnson was a good leader. Bush 's guiding star seems to be the destruction of the American middle class. Johnson declared a war on poverty. Bush is trying to make most of us poor.

In Viet Nam, we eventually pulled out. Thirty years later, Communism is dead and Viet Nam is Westernizing. The United States and Viet Nam are establishing relationships.

It’s time to pull out of Iraq. We are not doing anyone any good there. If publishing stories about the suicide murders in Iraq helps to convince the American people that it’s time to pull out, so be it.

As usual, Tierney takes the position that if reality is denied, it will somehow go away. There is no use in attacking Tierney because he is only fulfilling the role for which he was hired by the NYTimes: pandering to the lunatic fringe.

Continuation of previous post

Later, I went back to Brooks' Forum and found a lot of short angry posts denouncing Democrats, Liberals, anyone opposing Bush. Some even admitted that numbers confused them, but they knew what is right.

So, I posed a simple numbers question:

"Why am I supposed to like the Bush indexing scheme, if under his scheme, I lose three quarters (75%) of my Social Security benefit?

"I apologize for numbing your mind with numbers, so I'll try the same question with US Dollars, which even the mathematically-challenged should be able to understand:

"My Social Security benefit is $24,000 a year. Why should I be happy when Bush cuts that to $6,000 a year?"

Indexing Social Security - Brooks' Column in the NYTimes

In his column, David Brooks praised Bush's proposal for indexing Social Security benefits. Briefly, this amounts to reducing benefits for middle class retirees and leaving low income retirees' benefits where they are now. He accused Democrats of being hypocrites for not agreeing to this.

Forum contributors were fairly uniform in condemning Brooks' proposal. My comment was:

I was going to write a criticism of Brooks' column, but after I read the other contributions in this Forum, I no longer feel that I have anything left to say. My distinguished colleagues have said it all. We agree, Brooks is a shill for Bush.

We know it, the NYTimes knows it and surely Brooks knows it.

The NYTimes obviously has made an executive decision to seek "balance" on its Op-Ed page.

To satisfy this need and to make a good salary for very little effort, Brooks and Tierney have offered themselves, just as whores offer themselves to paying customers.

What Brooks and Tierney really believe about Social Security, I have no way of knowing, but I'll bet that they are very pleased with the strong, articulate and unanimously negative reaction that they evoked from Forum contributors.

They can now go to their bosses and say: "You wanted 'balance.' Well, you got 'balance,' in spades. Now, when do I get my raise in pay?”