cheery day yesterday

my family drove up from Jersey to wail and moan over Sick Boy (me) and bring me tons of food which i will eat but slowly, slowly! evening brought Madame Olivia, queen of hearts, and we had fun playing Clue and watching silly movies for hours. happiness, gotta be good for me.

but today brings me back to the terrifying right wing agenda taking over our lifes. Here's one example - And the Daily Howler shows that not only do the Rich NOT pay more taxes than we do - we've been giving them damn money. Is this really a big surprise to anyone?

The New York Times does us its usual crap when it discusses the costs of Bushie's new Social Security program (Note: Reg. required.) which is apparently going to need billions to trillions of dollars borrowed - when we are in debt and at war and, let's face it, not being encouraged to buy Made In America anymore. You can see their lack of journalistic integrity by their refusal to look at these two paragraphs at the same time:

"The president does support personal accounts, which need not add over all to the cost of the program but could in the short run require additional borrowing to finance the transition," Mr. Bolten said. "I believe there's a strong case that this approach not only makes sense as a matter of savings policy, but is also fiscally prudent."

Proponents say the necessary amount of borrowing could vary widely, from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars over a decade, depending on how much money people are permitted to contribute to the accounts and whether the changes to Social Security include benefit cuts and tax increases.

Uh-HUH. Right when we need someone to pick the way through their tangled legal and financial talk, the Times fails to do its job. Bolten believes there is a strong case - he doesn't explain what the case is or why it's strong. (You all know how I feel about politicians who use the word BELIEVE - they usually use the word to avoid having to prove anything. It's a red flag and journalists should jump at it.)

How is it fiscally prudent to dig a deeper hole? He also uses the phrases "short run" and "additional borrowing" - well, a decade isn't exactly short, especially when we don't know where we're gonna be in ten years-and we're running a war that costs several billion a month. And wait a second - ADDITIONAL borrowing? Additional on top of what? Could be talking about what we've already borrowed. Could be referring to borrowing already earmarked to finance the program. When will the Times get some balls and ask some who where how when why and what? (Not to mention where we're gonna get the money to pay back all this shit in ten years?)