Ahh, shaddup, ya liberal pansy. Health care costs are going up because they keep inventing new, expensive treatments and drugs, and because doctors have to practice cover-your-ass medicine lest they be sued for not catching the brain tumor of a patient who came in with a sprained ankle. (Thanks, trial lawyers! John Edwards, take a bow!) Energy costs are going up because of supply disruptions in Russia and the threat of terrorist sabotage in the Middle East. You can argue that the terrorist threat is higher because we have chosen to fight terrorists rather than surrender to them, but I think the long-term benefit of fighting is worth paying a little more at the pump. Poverty is up because there are more poor people. (Okay, I don't have an off-the-cuff answer for that one. I'm still two for three.)
But I'm sure Bush has a magic wand he could just wave to fix all these problems. He just doesn't want to. Because he's not really compassionate. And because then Halliburton profits would go down. Whereas President Kerry would use the magic wand to solve all our problems, plus give out lots of hugs and kisses. Because Kerry is love.
Posted by Mr Green at August 31, 2004 08:37 PMBush could nuke China. That would crimp oil demand, sending prices down.
Come on, Green, show some creativity.
Posted by: Brian J. at September 2, 2004 04:35 PMDamn. I hate when I fail to think outside the box like that.
To redeem myself, I offer this fix for the poverty stats: Bush could institute a program of executing the least wealthy 1% of Americans each year. This would encourage hard work and wealth creation while simultaneously offsetting population growth.
Posted by: Mr. Green at September 2, 2004 05:11 PMOoh, that's no good. If you do it on percentages, you'll have a bottom 1% at least until there are only 100 Americans left.
Best to just shoot everyone below the poverty line, or until the United States has the number one per capita income in the world, which is a smaller number of executions.
Or lethal injection, I suppose which is more humane I hear.
That would never work either, because the "poverty line" is just an arbitrary line drawn through the bottom 10% or so. That is why the "war on poverty" is, and always has been, doomed to failure.
The poor keep getting richer, and then the line gets redrawn. I'll betcha that's what he means that "the poverty rate has risen". Some bureaucrat decided it was time to move the goalposts again...
Posted by: Desert Cat at September 4, 2004 05:57 PMHey, we've got poor people, we've got hungry people - I've got an idea...
Posted by: Mr. Soylent Green at September 5, 2004 10:23 AMGoing straight to hell in 3, 2, 1...
Posted by: Mr. Green at September 5, 2004 10:23 AM"Poverty is up because there are more poor people. (Okay, I don't have an off-the-cuff answer for that one. I'm still two for three.)"
Let me assist... The "more" people you speak of are largely poor immigrants.
[estimated number warning]
According to predictions by the US Census Bureau:
2004 US Total Pop: 300 Million
2030 US Total Pop: 350 Million
2050 US Total Pop: 400 Million
2004 Non-Imm Americans: 240 Million
2030 Non-Imm Americans: 249 Million
2050 Non-Imm Americans: 245 Million
So… the growing population is increasingly made up of poor immigrants. It seems that as we move into the future, John Kerry wants to feed the world by taxing Americans and inviting the starving foreigners to eat off of our plate. The solution, quite clearly, is to butcher illegal immigrants and send the meat to starving people in foreign countries. By doing so, we discourage illegal immigration, and remove the hunger-force motivating poor people to immigrate to America.