Thoughts for today, Thursday, June 17

Thoughts for today:

Maybe it was just as well that Bush the First did not go all the way to Baghdad. Supposedly Saddam was set to rain his so-called weapons of mass destruction down on Israel if he did so. Saddam was an Armageddon kind of guy: he had already set fire to one country, 600 oil wells, while flooding the nearby Gulf with oil (why I was worried about Saddam building or much more likely buying a bomb -- my justification for the second Gulf war).

Had Saddam showered poison gas and anthrax spores on Tel Aviv does anyone doubt that Israel would have hesitated to nuke Baghdad or more, potentially killing millions -- histories second Hiroshimas?

******

No need for a new American political party that prioritizes both protecting the country from outside threats while upholding the interest of the average person's economic good (the latter mostly ignored by Dems as well as Repubs). Today's parties just have to return to the policies of both Democratic and Republican parties of the '60s and early '70s -- against which low-life segregationist George Wallace railed: "There isn't a dime's worth of difference."

He was right (good thing): Nixon signed a $9/hr minimum wage to go into effect immediately -- at 60% of today's average income -- and was poised to finish LBJ's health care work by extending coverage to all ages and incomes. LBJ stuck by Vietnam harder than Nixon who withdrew our financial and air support just at the moment the South Vietnamese took up all the bloody ground fighting.

Today's Republican party tries its best to destroy our economy by distorting the balance of every market -- financial, real estate, and labor -- heavily in favor of its rich patrons. Today's Democrats give most all their economic attention to mopping up after Republican damage to the financial and real estate markets -- while totally forgetting the labor market which not only dominates the lives of most middle class (and going down!) but ultimately perverts the political forum -- in favor of Republicans (a vicious circle Dems really must bust out of if sanity or Dems are ever to rule again).