892 I Don't Understand

892 I Don’t Understand

Note to readers:  Today’s post is a blatant violation of my self-imposed ban on writing in the first person singular, because I don’t know how else to say all this.  Apologies.  --WJR.



I don’t understand this imbecile debt ceiling flap over benefit cuts followed, eventually, maybe, possibly, by spending cuts.  It makes no sense.  I think this whole deficit thing is overblown and a propaganda tool to make Republicans look good, when what they're doing is advocating ruin and sedition.


I don't understand the troop buildup in Afghanistan.  


I don't understand the continuation and expansion of Bush's secret prisons by a guy who pledged to end all that.  


I don't understand why a Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh is taken seriously.


I don't understand why guys like Boehner and Reid get anywhere.  (One on each side of the fence.)  


I don't understand why I have to pay for the mistakes of big banks that screwed us and screwed up.


I don't understand why I have to pay for auto company bailouts that cost us a billion dollars while Fiat looks to a profit on its newly minted, newly bailed out Chrysler subsidiary.


I don't understand how or why congress lets  lobbies promote (buy) ideas, write the legislation and bribe them into passing.


I don't understand the attack on separation of church and state.


I don't understand how Supreme Court justices continue to sit while getting favors from people on whose cases they decide.


I don't understand why the Pentagon, king of waste and excess, gets a free pass.


I don't understand why Murdoch is demonized for simply finding a niche and filling it, and why the blame is on him and not his customers.


I don't understand why speculators continue to manipulate the price of gasoline apparently without fear of reprisals.


I don't understand why we kill the space program but continue pouring money into Pakistan.


I don’t understand how the very people who want government to take a hands-off position on most everything insist on making a woman's right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term exempt from their march to anarchy.  


I don't understand what happened to the idea of shared sacrifice.


I don't understand how politicians get away with painting congressional district lines that make their geography look like skin lesions you'd have removed if you had one in any of those shapes.


I don't understand how states and industry can take away the right of workers to organize, and that workers no longer seem to WANT to organize.


I don't understand how states build border fences with Mexico at huge cost and to no effect.


I don't understand why AK-47s are legal in places where there is no war.


I don't understand what people hope for or expect when they force the price of gold far beyond its worth and turn it into another weapon for the survivalist militia.


I don’t understand how a one percent increase in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a “market rally” or a one percent drop is a “plunge.”


I don’t understand how business continues to cry poverty and for tax cuts while not creating jobs.


I don’t understand how corporate profits continue to rise and unemployment doesn’t shrink.


I don’t understand how owners of National Football League teams send their men onto the field for high-paying crowds of ticket holders to  cheer the players’ head injuries, and then deny health insurance to retirees when serious medical problems develop a decade later.  This is the 21st century version of “The Lady or the Tiger.”


I don’t understand how the president we elected to fix all this has just allowed (or maybe made) all this stuff worse.


I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions (and questions) are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments (and answers) to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2011