Social Security "Reform": Bush's Fraudulent Diversion
George W. Bush's 60-day, 60-city tour to sell the idea that Social Security is the biggest problem in the world right now is a total diversion. Why work on the real nasty problems when you can worry about something that is good until 2052 if you do nothing in the interim? He will expend no political capital (as he likes to put it) on this because, if he fails, so what? There are a couple generations worth of time to do something. Meanwhile, he is hoping the people won't notice that we have now passed 1,500 American casualties in Iraq, even the Shiites are discussing whether it would be better to break up Iraq, all factions in Iraq agree that the Americans should leave sooner rather than later, the European Union is still not really throwing its money in (or troops), we are approaching $300 billion in spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israel truce could come apart again at any moment, Blair rebuffs us on global warming, we can't get off our hands on Darfur, Greenspan says we are in unsustainable debt, India and China will out-compete us for oil, and most of our rights including the right to sue are being stripped away as the massive corporate giveaways continue. Other than that and a few dozen other worthy problems, it makes a lot of sense for the President to concentrate on a non-problem. Let's fix something that doesn't need fixing. He should have been a sleight-of-hand magician.[more]