1. Institute a compulsory draft with a guaranteed call-up age spanning from 15 to 50 with no deferrments. We round up Iraqis that young and have National Guard troops that old (and older) serving in combat, so this age span shouldn’t be a problem. This addresses so many issues: A) we would then have a huge robust Military that could invade every nation in the Middle East simultaneously without all this fretting about force numbers. B) By reducing the number of school-aged children in the upper grades (having virtually eliminated grades 9 - 12), we can realize tremendous budget cuts to the schools. C) This will drive all those liberals over the border to Canada for sure, and they’re the only ones whining about all those spendy federal social programs anyway.

2. Redefine “senior” as age 80 and over, with everybody else working for the defense industry making all the goods our newly expanded military needs. This will not only take many people off the SS rolls by turning them into productive salary-earners, but also most of these major players in the miltary industrial complex have superb health care plans (say goodbye to Medicare) and retirement plans (even further reducing the SS burden….

…solutions are out there, and robustly righteous, God-fearing men like Gee Dub, with ample prayer and reflection and diversion of the press’s attention to another Scott and Lacey-type trial, will find them…
[/stirring strains of “God Bless America”]

The only down side is that eventually the Chinese and other foreign investors who keep our economy propped up will acknowledge we are dead beats and pull the plug, sending us into an Argentina like crash. When gasoline cost $5 a gallon and a new digital camera goes for $3000 it will probably get the public’s attention.

Sorry, I’ve been reading Krugman too much.

Unfortunately, the “just wait and eventually they’ll run themselves into the ground/the movement will implode/the people will catch on” strategy won’t work in this case. I keep imagining it will, but that 9/11 glow that sustained the neocons for so long still has enough energy to keep weak Democratic candidates out of office.

I’m pretty sure that, left to their own devices, they would eventually run themselves into the ground, but in the meantime they’re taking us down with them! Dammit, we need action, we need intelligent, GOOD people running things. We need new ideas! We can’t afford to wait.

Whew.

I really thought Bush had made things bad enough in his first term to cause this, but apparently we’re gonna have more of a pendulum upswing to the right the Dems are going to have to come in and fix things again.

By the way, if it’s really a death tax, what happens if I refuse to pay it?

Well, there’s really only one question we can ask ourselves at this point - what would George Lackoof do? He’d tell us to know our values and frame the debate: we know that when we next get into office we’ll have to raise taxes, because the Republicans won’t. Like you guys said, they want social security, welfare, public schools, libraries, etc to die. (Well, at least the ones at the top of their economic and political food chain do). With that in mind, let’s start preparing. We have to get it in the heads of the american people that paying taxes is a good thing - an adult responsibility that allows us to be the great nation that we are today. Commercials showing roads with potholes being fixed, kids being able to go to libraries, etc. can all ingrane a sense into the american public that paying taxes is responsible, and lowering them is reckless and immature - not characteristics of a good politician. If we prepare now, less americans will mind when we have to raise taxes in the future. If we don’t, we lose again.

As for informing the public about the good of taxes, I’m going to head over to the cynic’s corner and have a cry. People are generally not very bright, and probably won’t understand these kinds of things for a good many years later. By that time, who knows how screwed up our nation will be.