William's Blog

When I was a kid, I remember hearing the mellifluous ?Wizard of Ooze,? Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen (R., IL), talking about Congressional spending. It seems relevant today so let me bring it into the 21st century by increasing the values by an order of magnitude: ?A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you?re talking about real money!?

Tonight, Disney News (ABC) explained the financial crisis as one might expect?a soothing voiceover by the noted explainer of the complex, Robert Krulwich, and an animated cartoon of a $100 bill flying from person to person, making all our dreams come true. . . It reminded me of Joe Jackson?s lyrics about the Gipper*

The Pied Piper of the TV screen
Is gonna make it simple
And he's got it all mapped out
And illustrated with cartoons
Too hard for clever folks to understand
They're more used to words like:
Ideology . . .
They're not talkin' 'bout right and left
They're talkin' 'bout

Right and wrong - do you know the difference?


Well, do we?

Under the Bush administration the national debt has increased by $4,169,300,804,666 from $5,727,776,738,304 to $9,897,077,542,970, a 73% increase. With 304 million Americans, that?s $32,468 per person!

So, the bailout: What?s another trillion among friends? We are all friends, right?


* Note for those under thirty?you might not know that the Gipper was Ronald Reagan, a B-list actor and, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, a cooperative HUAC** witness. As a gubernatorial candidate, his proposed solution for campus unrest was ?Let?s have the bloodbath now and get it over with.? Governor Reagan (R., CA) went on to become the object of age-related jokes on NBC's Saturday Night Live. The last laugh was on us all?in 1981 Reagan became the 40th President of the United States.

** House Un-American Activities Committee. Patriotic commie hunters. Comparable to the patriotic witch hunters of 1692 Salem (see Arthur Miller, The Crucible). Their inquisition inspired the Blacklist?hardly different than the Soviet process of turning opponents into nonpersons. Another of histoy's many ironies.