h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>No really, he must be able to do something, surely? <<
Yeah, he's really good at being pliant. (My theory is he's not as thick as he pretends, because a stupid person is not threatening. He's deep down, really scary - not to mention rat cunning...

Hi, Lentilla.

Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen of Peoria probably don't even know who Wolfowitz is. All they know is that the economy is starting to come back, and Saddam has been captured.





If politicians didn't exist, we would have to invent them, so we'd have a reason to vent.

*loves the movie Being There*

All Americans that are upset seem to know who he is
The New American Century is his work, it's a must read.

Were you asking about this W before? I thought your W = GWB

I think you are right about what many people see --
"All they know is that the economy is starting to come back, and Saddam has been captured."

Ok readyfreddy TELL me what websites you respect and I can still get you links that will make you question things.

The Republicans are quite up front about their goals.
Tell me what you read respectfully and I will find you links.

I think the CSMonitor is an excellant nuetral source for International News. If you do not like them I have others.

I read from Christian right and the NRA to the ACLU.
The Repubicans thinktanks to anti-Bush rhetoric. That is the only way to take an educated guess at what is going on.

George W. Bush got into Yale after a colourful career at Andover, a very elite prep school (think Eton) as a legacy student because his father, grandfather and other relatives had gone there and given scads of money. He scraped through with a low C average - often referred to as a 'gentleman's C' because his father was a senator (as was his grandfather, Prescott Bush) ambassador to the UN and later head of the CIA. You probably could nto do that today, or even then at most schools, but Yale and Harvard were particularly clubby WASP enclaves back then. Bush was an active fraternity member, who wrote one letter to the editor during his university career (at the height of the Vietnam war) The letter defended the practice of branding fraternity recruits with a hot iron as part of initiation.
He failed to make money in Texas as an oilman, despite his father's friends investing money in his company, but suspiciously managed to sell his stock at an inflated price just before the company went broke.
He jumped the line to get into the Texas Air National Guard and never completed his tour of duty with them.
Because of his name, he was chosen to front a group of investors who bought a major league baseball team and then threatened to move the team out of state unless the city used public funds to build them a new stadium.
He was governor of Texas, a state where the gov. is not much more than a figurehead - the real power is with the legislature and Lt. Gov.. And presided over the dismantling of enviromental regulations that left Houston the smoggest city in the nation.
He is a self admitted reforming problem drinker who hid his conviction for drunk driving.
He has not admitted to being an alcoholic or using cocaine, but has been widely accused of it and refuses to discuss what he "may or may not have done in his youth" (or his thirties or his fourties...)
He is a "born-again" fundementalist Christian
Since becoming president he has held only 11 press conferences (including yesterdays)at which he personally answered questions from reporters.
These are not partisan interpretations, these are widely reported, well-documented empirical facts.

Nicely done
*waits for more comments*

Well I like GW. His wife looks a nice woman. And I like his K9s.
I like Rumsfeld better...but that's just a personal thing.

> Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen of Peoria probably don't even know who Wolfowitz is. All they know is that the economy is starting to come back, and Saddam has been captured.

Oddly enough, there hasn't been a wave of people dancing in the streets around here. Perhaps the less rational Americans are ecstatic about Saddam's capture, but I feel like Saddam isn't really the problem, and hasn't been all along - so his capture is really the end to a sad chapter in American and Iraq history.

I was reading an article that said that Saddam reacted sarcastically to questions directed at him about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism in Iraq. I don't blame him. After all this time, people still believe that bushwah.

I don't think the economy's coming back. The debts still exist and weren't erased by Saddam's capture. The terrorism certainly will not decrease as a result of his capture! Any relief we might experience is false, and the stock market knows it.

Of course, I'm just pessimistic

One thing is for sure..the Swiss bankers will not rush to expose SH's accounts. Nor those of Bib Laden.

What a bunch of jokers these people are!

<>

The economy is apt to be spotty. The really tricky bit is getting the economy to rise without triggering inflation which would bump interest rates up and make borrowing more expensive. What about the elderly who rely on interest income to supplement their pensions? They've been hurting for years. Good luck to 'em.

<>

That's a really good point. America has become more and more dependent on consumer spending to keep the economy going. When consumers run out of money, they must be encouraged to borrow. To let them borrow, interest rates must be kept low, which means inflation has to stay low. It's a precarious balancing act. Also, oil prices must be kept low. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Mexico....?

Don't I wish!

Seriously, some American retirees move to Mexico so their pension checks will go farther. Prescriptions are cheaper there, too.

So are VWs

Paul, agree with every word.

Its so odd that we have anyone claiming to be an expert on the economy. Yeah sure I could explain how little bits interact with other little bits of it and could understand the events that have passed, but predicting the future and controlling the economy accurately and consistently is IMHO way beyond the abilities of anyone.

When a country runs up a huge surplus you always get a chancellor or head of state saying its down to their prudent planing and the hard work of the nation. When they turn in a defecit and have to borrow its because of an unpredictable downturn in the markets and lazy unionised workers.

Right on the money paperboy. As to ReddyFreddy saying getting through Yale or Harvard puts you into the top 0.001%...

Harvard Princeton & Yale all make exceptions for athletes. All kinds of exceptions. Those athletes, while be very good at atheletics, certainly are not in the top 0.001% academically, more like the top 40% or so.

It is very common practice today to use "legacy" as a basis for admission, ie. if you parents went to the Ivy, then you have a much better chance of going than a non-legacy student. This is true at the Ivy's especially, but also more generally.

Bush getting through undergrad with a C average means nothing. He did make it through Harvard Biz School as well. But have you ever seen Biz grad students (MBA's)? They don't do anything but drink and pick fights with the real grad students. Their classes are a joke, for the most part. It's more the admission to grad school, than the actual learning, that helps people. And we know Dubya has no problem with admissions committees.

dave

Hi adelle

Can you give me some cases in which you were trying to be heard, and weren't allowed to get your message out? How specifically has the US government gagged you?

Also, you said you were "fighting for ecological and human equality". That is an agenda. It is something you choose to advance.

I'm for preservation (and much more of it), but not equality. What makes you're way right, and my way wrong? Opinion and persepective.

dave

I had not placed you as a "postmodernist" Blick.
Just shows how Ms Thatcher re-made Britain.

Um, I think the very expense of attending the ivy league schools rules out all but two categories of potential applicants: the ones with well-heeled parents, and the ones whose mental candlepower earns them some scholarships. My sister went to Mount Holyoke on a scholarship. Her husband went to Yale on a Navy scholarship.

If Harvard and Yale graduates belong to some sort of elite, it probably has a lot to do with connections that are formed while they are in college. They will keep running into and helping one another all through life. Skull and Bones is just one manifestation of this. There are undoubtedly others. John Kerry, who is running for president, is also a Skull and Bones man.

It would be an interesting event having two skull and bones men running aginst each other for the Presidency the first time.
******
I do not understand the economy but I am not trusting any brief announcements that it is coming back. One good factor rising does not make good economic news overall.

I do not understand how we went from a surplus to the largest deficit ever is helping. All the new debt is deferred until 2006, including the Medicare bill.

Each time joblessness has rose the new jobs that come are not high pay with benefits.

Much of the high earnings from the stock market in last decade are under dispute as unlawful or most unethical but legal- the investigations are creeping.

More people have lost their retirement,401Ks than ever before.

We are still moving manufacturers abroad and still have the off shore tax exempt companies whose tax savings could pay off the National debt(could last year).

Not by any stretch an economist, but observation shows this:

to keep the economy bouyant consumers are encouraged to spend.
To encourage consumers to spend, interest rates and inflation need to be kept low.
Having spent, and incurred debt, consumers must pay debts.
Jobs available to the majority of consumers are not available because the standard of living is too high; manufacturers need to maintain consistent profits and therefore source their labour where they can get most out of a dollar. Places like China and India.
Now many low scale semi-technical jobs are also being sent to India, meaning that entry level positions into many companies are no longer on the same continent as the parent company. This makes it difficult to switch jobs or career tracks.
Therefore people are less inclined to spend what they cannot afford in case they lose their job in the near future. Therefore they need to be encouraged to spend and borrow...

...vicious circle, yes?

The problem leads to a situation not unlike Saudi Arabia is facing: a lack of infrastructure and a lack of people willing to do the low level, even menial tasks, that need to be done in order to keep the economy working at all, never mind working well.

How did we get here?