1. 95% war, 5% everything else. Unfortunately. 2. The war is a serious, serious issue, but it is a short-term issue. Either we stay in Iraq a little longer (1-3 years), or we bring our troops home now. Democrats are on one side, Republicans are on the other (pretty much), and it makes for a good political fight.
So what happened with everything else? The politicians don't want to talk about problems that involve bad news, e.g. Social Security and Medicare reform. The President tried to push through Social Security reform and got slapped down by his own party. Medicare got more bloated (with the prescription drug bill) thanks to Bush. The only thing worse would have been the Democrats' drug plan, which was even more expensive. Those two programs are going to bankrupt this country (ask Gruss and he will tell you that we are already bankrupt, but that's another story) and the chickens in Congress just want to punt the problem down the road. The trade deficit is insane, the dollar is in freefall, and Saudi Arabia and China could unleash economic chaos by dumping the dollar either as a peg or as currency reserves. China in particular could flood the market with dollars from their foreign currency reserves and cause a serious meltdown in world markets. The only thing we have going for us in that situation is that everyone else (particularly China, whose exports would be smashed if the value of the dollar plummeted and they didn't maintain their peg to our currency) would share the pain. The health care system is completely screwed up. So far the only proposals I have seen to "fix" it are to spend more government dollars on it. Great! The Middle East is on the verge of a total meltdown. Syria is trying to acquire nukes and arm missiles with chemical warheads. Iran is trying to develop nukes. They have activated their terrorist proxies all over the region. Lebanon is sliding toward another war between anti-Syrian forces and Hezbollah. Syria is massing troops near the Golan Heights. Hamas is raining rockets down on southern Israel. Israel just bombed some sort of installation in Syria that might have been a nuke equipment facility. The window is closing on our ability to prevent Iran from getting nukes, and a war - or at least a serious bombing campaign- is looking increasingly likely. On 9/21/07, Bruce wrote: > > > > 1. Does this mean that [the war]_is_all we are going to hear about next > year? > > 2. Since this is the only thing that they can talk about now, what is > happening to all of the other issues that they should be talking about? > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Enterprise web applications, build robust, secure scalable apps today - Try it now ColdFusion Today ColdFusion 8 beta - Build next generation apps Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:242845 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
