an immodest proposal

while we are nationalizing businesses like aig and fannie mae and freddie mac and bear stearns, why don’t we just get it over with and nationalize the health care industry as well?

it’s ironically amusing to me that the bush administration now walks into the sunset having accomplished the most socialist acquisitions in american history. politicians who have screamed for decades about how inefficient it is to have government control and regulation of business are now screaming about the need to take on the financial industry’s bad debt, which was created by the lack of oversight those politicians promoted.

might as well add the entire health care industry to the total weight we assume, since this ship is going to sink anyway. we have spent $816 billion bailing out what we’ve bailed so far. add to that an estimated $1 trillion dollars for assuming the bad debt. add to that the annual deficit of about $500 billion, which does not include the cost of the war in iraq. so add $10 billion a day for that.

add that shit up.

send that shit to china, if we even still can, at who knows what ultimate cost.

and then realize that we’ve done nothing, nothing, nothing to address the financial insolvency of social security, medicare, and medicaid.

it doesn’t matter. no one is going to give you a truly comprehensive look at what’s wrong, so neither candidate is going to give us a truly comprehensive answer. neither obama or mccain. why not? because they can’t be honest about it. and they know it. because there is no fucking answer, that’s why not. actually there’s one answer — america is going to irretrievably sink under the weight of its own accumulated bloat.

how do these all numbers add up?

they add up to rome burning. and everyone has no choice except to fiddle.

what’s going on in the white house?

from swampland, a blog at time.com, via the washington post, comes a story about the decision to torture detainees:

Nineteen of those documents were withheld from disclosure specifically because the Bush administration decided they are covered by a “presidential communications privilege,” according to the filings, made in federal court in Manhattan. Some were “authored or solicited and received by the President’s senior advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made by the president.”

which raises the question: if they can do that stuff when everyone’s watching them like a hawk, what’s going on at the white house when everyone’s attention is on the election?