Nice letter deconstructing neocon "logic" in Stars & Stripes

[lebkuchen]

I'll add it to The List: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/18/45138/421

Neo-con day on letters page

This past Sunday must have been “Neo-con day” at Stars and Stripes, as most of the letters http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=36839 were by radical, right-wing extremists. I’ll start with “Liberal letter distorts facts.” The writer states that “the treasury isn’t about to be bankrupt.” This is semantics. He fails to go on and address the truth about the deficit. The U.S. has the largest budget, trade and current account deficits in its history, which is funded by foreign money coming into the country by importing more goods than we export. We pay for those imports with loans coming from other countries. It’s fueled exponentially by war spending that the U.S. doesn’t have in the coffers — this is credit. Historically, currency crises will follow.

The economy erodes when the deficit passes 5 percent of gross domestic product, and we surpassed this level almost a year ago. When the deficit gets too large, investors will protect themselves. (Some have started to do this already by cashing out of U.S. currency.) When they sell assets in the currency, it snowballs and eventually causes interest rates to spike and the economy collapses.

At the current pace, our indebtedness to other countries will reach 28 percent of GDP by year’s end and will equal 300 percent of exports. (Argentina and Brazil were at 400 percent right before they collapsed in the 1990s.) The people who will feel this pain most will be those of us who don’t have millions stashed away to soften the fall, including the lemmings who support the current “make-the-rich-richer” administration.

To the author of the letter “Majority has rights, too”: You are correct in your assertion that you have “freedom of religion” and “free exercise thereof.” But the problem with most right-wing evangelicals is that they want to make sure everyone else is practicing “their” form of religion and then use our tax dollars to promote it. To that I say: Not!

Finally, to the author of the letter “Ann Coulter has backbone”: If you listen to her long enough, you will find that she is a self-promoter who makes enough outrageous statements to get on TV. If she were witty instead of just mean-spirited and nasty, maybe she could be a legitimate voice for the right.

Jim Makela
Osan Air Base, South Korea

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=36948

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Great letter..and he signed his name!!!!!

[NoAmericanTaliban]

2. Good Man. More & more folks are starting to stand up to these liars.