Meager opposition

You know, I'm glad the dems are actually making some attempt to challenge the President, and the State of the Union rebuttal was decent (at least a hell of a lot better than the one given by Locke a few years ago...Christ that was pathetic...), but I wish they were nailing him harder on it. His numbers are just plain _wrong_. They're contrived to make social security look in worse shape than it really is, and he's instructed the social security administration to issue statements casting a positive light on his argument. He's lying. Call him out on it. I think one of the biggest problems the Democrats have these days is they're perceived as not being willing to take a stand. And I understand that's partly because they have to maintain an extremely heterogenous coalition, but still...stop acting like vacillating pussies and tell the emperor to shut up and put some clothes on.

Yes, social security is heading into the red. The baby-boomers are coming of age, so you're going to have a huge influx of beneficiaries, and that money has to come from somewhere. In a few decades, social security won't have enough in and of itself to cover those costs (unless, of course, you believe Bush's own hyped economic growth forecasts of sustained 7% growth over the next 50 years, in which case social security will be doing just fine, thank you, and why are we having this discussion?). But for one thing, after the baby-boomers die off, social security will do just fine. It's just like any basically solvent business: you go through periods of losing money, but over the long haul, things even out. That's very different from the system being "fundamentally broken."

So given that, the answer is to either temporarily reduce benefits for those who don't need it (unpopular, so therefore probably not realistic), or you infuse the system with extra money to cover the time it needs the extra funding. Hell...with the money we spend on Iraq every week, we could probably cover social security for several years!

These days, I can't figure out who I dislike more: the neocon Republican leadership, or the dumb fuck voters who actually believe them despite copious proof of their lying and manipulation of evidence. I suppose I could settle for just hating everybody. That could work.